If you haven’t heard the song “August Evenings” by Charlemagne, do yourself a favour and check it out (the label offers it as a free download). It reminds me a bit of “To Harm” by Clairvoyants. Actually, come to think of it, download that one too.

Ah, self (or, rather, sports) -induced pressure: I have an accounting assignment due a week from today, but let’s face it, as of noon Thursday I’m doing nothing but watching basketball until midnight Sunday. However, this also means that I have to spend more hours in the office today, tomorrow and Wednesday to do the work I’d normally have done in the two afternoons, leaving me little time to actually do the accounting assignment.

It sucks when a plan doesn’t work, but it’s a special breed of sucking when it defeats itself.

Oh well, luckily I’m a flexible and resourceful guy, so I can probably manage it. But thank god for caffeine and understanding bosses.

What the? This is the second time one of my blogs has been linked by Slate (albeit way down at the bottom of the page).

Christ, I didn’t think people read this thing…

So, seeing a film in a small theatre like Jackman Hall really highlights a whole class of people that I just can’t stand: movie latecomers. Here’s why these people are a special kind of idiot:

1. It’s a Cinematheque film, which means it’s a ten year old art house film with subtitles. This kind of film does not have ten minutes of preceding trailers and advertisements that give you a buffer; when the curtain opens and the lights dim, the main feature begins.
2. The theatre’s tiny, so if you get there late, everyone will notice, and you’ll be in everyone’s way. This doesn’t seem to bother these shitheads, as some of them arrived at today’s film 30 minutes late (by which time they’d missed most of the character development) and stood in the doorway and aisle next to me.
3. Most normal humans know that when you enter a theatre where the movie is already playing, it’ll take a moment for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Again, most normal humans know that you simply wait until you can see, or maybe stare at the floor to get used to the dark. What you don’t do is fumble blindly and (I really wish I was kidding here) grope the person on the end of the aisle — who happened to be me — in the hopes of making your way to an empty chair.

I say lock the doors at one minute past. Fucknuts.

Today was our first foray into Cinematheque. We met Stanzi and T-Bone at Jackman Hall to see Midaq Alley, a Mexican adaptation of an Egyptian novel. The main selling point for me: a young Salma Hayek in her first starring role.

Not a bad movie, considering the budget they must have had. Except for the teeth. And the guy with the cheesy moustache. And the naked fat dude. And the rather amusing subtitle translation job. Ah, let’s face it, it could’ve been any movie and I would’ve liked it, ’cause she was in it. She’s so dreamy.

Sigh.

There’s a poster in the lobby of my office building advertising something called the “Professional Excellence Symposium”, a title so dumbass that it reminds me of the The Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

Once again, I selected my next Zip pick at the suggestion of T-Bone. This time it was Carandiru (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a film about the the 1992 São Paulo prison riot. I could feel real similarities to City Of God; there must be an established Bralizian style of film making. The telling of the story seemed more important than just recounting it, letting us actually get a sense of how pathetic and ferocious the inmates were. Not as good as City Of God, but I’d still recommend it.

Listening to Johnny Cash cover Soundgarden at 7:30 AM is a bit of a shock to the system. Stark lyrics sung by a starker voice. Left me feeling a bit melancholy for both, I admit.

Now that the MP3 has become my preferred format (supplanting the CD), I want to download a few albums and several songs, and thought I’d do it through one of the pay sites. So far, it’s been a pretty frustrating experience. I tried eMusic, where I found two of the albums I was looking for, but none of the individual songs. I then tried Napster, and found precisely nothing. No albums (and these aren’t exactly obscure, mind you: they’re the newest releases from Bright Eyes, The Kills and Soundtrack Of Our Lives) and none of the ~25 songs in my P2P wishlist. Puretracks, the CRIA’s download site, doesn’t have any of the (admittedly, more obscure) wishlist songs, and I could find only one of the three albums: I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning by Bright Eyes. Sadly, I can’t download it, but I can order it for more than it costs at HMV. Hot dammit.

So what are my options? 1) keep buying CDs; 2) use iTunes; 3) download using P2P software. I’d prefer not to do #1 since it goes against my new music strategy, as it were. #2 may not even be a viable option, since the iTunes library may be no better than the others I’ve tried, and besides it uses a dumbass file format that I don’t like. #3, however, is simple and free. I would feel guilty about it, though only about 5% as guilty as the CRIA would like me to feel since that’s about how much the artist gets of my CD buying habit.

Anybody know of any better download sites?

For some reason, English Cut — a blog written by a Savile Row tailor — is completely mesmerizing. It could be that I so badly want a bespoke suit, or it could be that I’m fascinated to see a blog with a non-tech/music/politics subject.