And Now, Process Questions

Or, rather, answers.

As mentioned in the last post, the man behind Phonic Phebruary utilized his Ipod to guide his one-a-day journey. I’m more a fan of the physical medium when it comes to music (you know, CDs and such) so my selection process will be a little different. For most of the month, I will utilize a card system. First, I will draw a card labeled “Number,” “Mix,” “Soundtrack,” or a letter of the alphabet. Then, comes the card with numbers one through 30 on them. Then, whatever card is draw is reinserted into the pile, the number card pile is reshuffled, and another number drawn.

The first card tells me where to go in my (and my wife, the Thunder’s) collection. It runs alphabetically by artist from Numbers (your 50 Cents and 10,000 Maniacs, if you will) to Z—in case you did not know how the alphabet went. Then we have soundtracks (alphabetical by film, if you must know) and mixes (chronologically). For the sake of me, holiday mixes are exempt from this process.

The next card is how many I count off in the category to get to the correct CD to use. The last card gives me the track number to use as inspiration.

The collection in question

Thus, if I got “F”, “6”, and “8”, I would have to write something inspired by Fountains of Wayne’s “I Got a Flair,” which can be found on their self titled debut album.

For most letters and categories, I do not have thirty CDs. For instance, I only own about a dozen by artists whose names start with “K.” In those cases, I just count to the end, rotate back to the front, and continue until I hit my magic number. Say I did get “K” and “15,” I’d actually end up with my 3rd “K” artist because I’d hit twelve then start back at 1 (13), 2 (14), and end on 3 (15). Same process for tracks as there is almost never 30 tracks on an album—maybe They Might be Giants has done it, but even that I doubt.

As I said, that is for most of the month. For four other times in the month, I will be taking your suggestions, one a week from January 2nd- January 29th. So leave your suggestions in the comments below, tweet them to me @UnGajje, or email them to me at tim[dot]g[dot]stevens[at]gmail[dot]com. Wait until January or start today to get a jump on things…the choice is yours!

And now, since this post is a bit dry, a joke (courtesy of Eli Matthew Aroesty-Cohen).

A man is walking around New York City one day and, out of nowhere, encounters a penguin waddling down the sidewalk. No one seems to be paying the penguin any mind, but the man cannot ignore it so he scoops up the arctic bird and brings him over to the first cop he can find.

“I found this penguin just now,” the man says, “What should I do with it?”

The cop, too busy directing traffic to be anything but abrupt waves the man off saying, “Take him to the zoo.”

“Great idea!” the man exclaims and is off without another word.

Hours later, the city has grown dark and the traffic cop is leaving the station, finally done with his shift. As he heads towards the stairs to the subway he sees the man from the afternoon, walking hand in flipper with the penguin down the street.

He jogs over to them and asks, confused, “I thought I told you to bring this fella to the zoo?”

“Oh you did and it was a great idea,” the man responds appreciatively. “But the zoo closed, so now I’m taking him to a movie.”

While Sir Waddlesworth enjoyed the romance of Love and Other Drugs, he really would have preferred to have seen the adrenaline pumping Unstoppable, given a choice.