Not Getting Sexyback

The first time I heard this track, I had no clue who was singing. There’s something familiar, I thought, but damned if I know what that is. Halfway through the second time I heard it, something clicked. That… that’s not Justin Timberlake, is it? Since when has he sounded like a girl?

I like the song. It gets under your skin, drags you out of your chair and has you shimmying and dancing on the spot. Here’s the question, though: why is it that Paris Hilton’s first album is universally condemned as being over-produced, when her braying gets modulated down to singing – while here, Timberlake’s admittedly higher register gets bumped into a whole different sex, and no one says anything?

Ben Rayner on Paris Hilton in the Toronto Star, Aug 27th 2006: "Of course Paris sounds decent. The girl has more money than all of our gods combined and about equal "pull," at least in those rarefied celebrity circles where "pull" is considered next to godliness.

If the first 15 runs at the thing had turned out something that gave listeners brain aneurysms and wiped out migratory bird flocks, the cash would have kept flowing until the evil was sufficiently contained for mass distribution at Wal-Mart. The music industry needs customers; it's not gonna kill them outright."

Timberlake, on the other hand, made the cover of Rolling Stone in September.

Huh? I'm so confused.

PS - The fact that I’m - in a sense - defending Paris Hilton actually makes me dislike the song more than I would've under normal circumstances.

From halfway down that slippery slope

I think I might be developing an addiction to classical music.

Stop laughing! It’s not funny, damnit! Okay, fine – maybe just a little.

Let me be more specific – I think I’m growing just a bit too fond of live classical music. See, the TSO has this program called TSoundCheck through which those classical fans between the ages of 18 and 29 can get cheap tickets to certain TSO programs. I don’t think it’s too often that a venerable institution like the TSO shares a selling strategy with your average drug dealer – but it’s the same principle, pretty much: first given them a taste for cheap ($12 a pop!), then – once they’re hooked – jack up the prices (anywhere from $35-$140!) and they’ll pay through the nose to get their nose ear candy.

And what can I say? I’ve always wanted to pretend to be an aesthete.

Thursday, they did Beethoven’s 2^nd and 6^th symphony, along with Mahler’s Rückert Lieder; and oh, how I loved it. It’s especially odd, as I have something of a tin ear for classical music: especially on CD, it all starts to meld into an aural blob of crazed violin bowing to me. Live, though, it comes alive, with people playing in unison, in opposition to synthesize sounds that you can almost feel on your skin. I had no idea music could actually be tactile before; the first time, I couldn’t stop smiling goofily because I had no idea music could feel like that.

I console myself with the thought that there are worse things to be addicted to.

It helps too that the performances aren’t note-perfect. On Thursday, Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s vocals on the Lieder were overshadowed by a too-exuberant orchestra, and perhaps the less sophisticated among us would be better able to appreciate Ruckert’s poetry if the text and a translation were provided with the programme, as was done for the Mozart@250 festival. Nevertheless, if you’re in the GTA area, and you’re between 18 and 29, TSoundCheck is very well worth a try.

Great. Now I’m a pusher.

Vent(i) for me, thanks

Edmund Blackadder:  This is turning into a really rotten evening.

Amy Hardwood:  Yes, well you better make the most of it, because it's your
last.And it's a pity, because it's usually against my principles to shoot dumb
animals.

Blackadder: Except squirrels?

Amy:  Yes! Bastards! I hate them with their long tails and their stupid 
twitchy noses. 

From Blackadder the Third, episode 5, “Amy and Amiability”

(Personally, I find squirrels adorable, but there's no accounting for tastes. )

We all – yes, even you in the back with the fedora and handlebar moustache – have things we can't stand. Things that annoy us, enrage us, – and why? Childhood accidents? Deeply-seated neuroses? Does it matter? I have a whole list.

I can't stand mushrooms. Oh, no, mushrooms in food are lovely – and the sight of mushrooms in grocery stores does not raise my blood pressure. However, when I see mushrooms growing in situ in my backyard, that I cannot bear. Consider if you will, a green lawn, with roses on the side; and then consider the lawn with little mushroom pop-pop-popping all over it. It's like acne, and what has my poor backyard done to deserve acne? It doesn't subsist on a diet of junk food, it gets enough water, and then it gets attacked by these... fungi? The first time it happened, I seethed, I simmered, I fumed – and then I went out and kicked the mushrooms all over the place. Of course, that made it worse, but I did feel a whole lot better (for a while.)

I'm picky about spelling. Not in general – I've corrected essays filled with typos, and felt nothing more than a mild sense of pity for the poor benighted soul who thought Austen was spelt Osten – but there are a few words I cannot bear to see misspelt. For example, when people misspell the English proper name Michael as Micheal, I see red. I mean, c'mon, “Micheal?” It LOOKS wrong, for crying out loud! As an aside – I'm a visual speller. My spelling depends on the word looking right to me. I usually have to write out words like caribbean out a few times before I get it right – carribbean? carribean? caribean? - which means I'd probably suck at things like spelling bees, which depend on having to sound out words. Anyway, “Micheal” just looks wrong, to me. I'd be really interested to know if anyone else gets this, or even spells visually. Let me also just point out that the Irish and Scottish variants of Michael are Mícheál and Mìcheal respectively, according to wwww.behindthename.com, which don't bug me, because, hello, different languages. But when someone mispells an obviously english name, as in, “I used to be a Micheal Jackson fan” - that bugs me. Also annoying is the spelling “Conner” for Connor - though I think this might be simply because C-O-N-N-O-R has a beatiful symmetry that's lost in C-O-N-N-E-R.

The name whose misspelling most annoys me, however, is my own. If we'd kept all the Christmas cards we've received over the years, here are some of the variants you'd see: Sharin, Sharen, Sherin, Sheren, Sheron, Sherrin – I'd go on, but this red haze is beginning to make typing problematic. Spelling errors are understandable when it's a card from an acquaintance of your father's who's maybe heard your name from a mutual friend, and as such is guessing at the spelling. But still, Sharon's a fairly popular name, and you'd figure people would know how it's spelt, right? Wrong. I once had a classmate say, “ You don't pronounce it Sharown, right? More like Sharen? So why not spell it that way?” Because that's the wrong spelling, idiot! If you can learn to pronounce “knight” as 'night' and not 'k-niggit', you can do me the courtesy of pronouncing my name correctly too!

People like Varsha Bhosle, who think that Indianness is the same as Hinduness have my undying contempt. Of course, Hinduism is a huge part of Indian culture – that's undeniable. But why deny the Indianness of religious minorities? Imagine being introduced to someone only to have them say, “Sharon? That's not an Indian name is it?” Well, if you mean to conflate Indianness with Hinduness, then no, it's not Indian. But given that there have been Christians, including my own lot, in India for nearly 2000 years, I don't think the whole “You're not Indian” argument holds much water.

*deep breath* Ah, much better. No more repressing for me – venting is good for the soul.

Geekness Confirmed! Woo!

Pure Geek 43 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Geek, earning you the title of: Pure Geek. It's not that you're a school junkie, like the nerd, and you don't really stand out in a crowd, like the dork, you just have some interests that aren't quite mainstream. Perhaps it's anime, perhaps it's computers, perhaps it's bottlecaps, perhaps it's all of those and more. Your interests take you to events and gatherings that are filled with people you find unusual and beyond-the-pale, but you don't quite consider yourself "of that crowd." Instead, you consider yourself to be fairly normal. Which, you are.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness You scored higher than 99% on geekosity You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Insane, y'know, in that camera-friendly way

I don't know what this means, or even if it's meant to mean anything, but damn if it didn't crack me up -