To a Girl and a College

This post is for National Blog Posting Month, which was brought to my attention by the lovely and hilarious Essaytch. They have something different every month and for April, the objective is to write a letter a day for a month. I’m obviously not writing a letter a day but I’m participating anyway.

And I’m sneaking in two more before this month is over, just to be more of a “participant.” Because 2 is kind of weak. So is 4, but hey, that qualifies as a “handful,” which is all I wanted to write.
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Dear Lit-class Girl,

You probably remember me, but I’m not too sure. You were in a couple of my Lit. classes with me last year. “British Literature after 1800,” and “British Literature before 1800” the very next semester. Both the classes were held in the same room, and you sat in the middle each semester. I thought you were kind of cute.

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Lost in Time

This post is a departure from my “normal” posts…whatever that is. I’m a huge fan of the show Lost. Well…I fell in love with Season 1, which was an utter masterpiece in television drama, perfectly fusing a depth of character development with a level of plot development that was pretty much incredible. And now, watching it is more of an exercise in maintaining that initial enthusiasm. It’s still a good show though.
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It’s been confirmed. The “Time-Loop Theory” for the TV show Lost is legit.

I am aware that the writers of the show have said no wacky time-travel related plots will be in the show. Well, they lied. Or made a mistake. Because this theory is too solid.

Basically (and I repeat, this is a very basic summary), what the guy who came up with the theory states is that when the Oceanic plane crashed onto the island in 2004, the entire island was stuck on a continuous time-loop of the year 1996. The island was being sent back in time every 108 minutes, which is how often “the numbers” in the Swan station had to be entered. So by crashing onto the island, everyone on the plane broke through some kind of hole in the time-space continuum and traveled back in time to 1996. (The hole was created when Desmond failed to enter the numbers in the Swann station the first time.)

That explains why Rose and Locke have their former health restored because both Locke and Rose were perfectly healthy back in 1996. That’s also why Jack’s dad is alive on the island (I think), because his body made it on the island, and his body wasn’t dead in ’96. It also explains why the outside world can’t find their way to the island. And it explains a bunch of other stuff too.

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To a Friend

This post is for National Blog Posting Month, which was brought to my attention by the lovely and hilarious Essaytch. They have something different every month and for April, the objective is to write a letter a day for a month. I’m obviously not writing a letter a day but I’m participating anyway.

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What’s up George,

I’m sure you remember me, but I’ll introduce myself anyway. I’m Michael Kim, from way back in the day. We were best friends from junior high to high school. It’s been a while, man. I haven’t talked to you in like 5 years…I’ve been thinking it’d be a good idea to catch up a little.

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Mixtape Time!

I got this cassette tape image at http://says-it.com/cassette/. It’s pretty cool. You put what you want on the label.

I like songs with multiple parts or nice, abrupt but well executed shifts. It’s like getting two or more songs for the price of one. And while going through my music library to make a playlist of my favorite “medley” type songs, I decided I had more than enough to make a nice mixtape out of it. It’s been a while since I made my last mixtape (BDJ Volume 2 is nearly ready!), and I’m long overdue for another one.

So I am pleased to present to you all the first volume of the Melodious Medlies compilation mixtapes. This inaugural volume is culled from music mostly made in this millennium (there were a couple favorites I had to include). All of the tracks are filled with smooth and exciting transitions and bridges that connect their various parts. These multi-faceted songs will make you laugh, they’ll make you cry, and they’ll make you want to hug your loved ones — then dance with them.

As I usually do with mixtapes, I tried my best to arrange the songs so they flow together as smoothly as possible. This one proved difficult because I didn’t know it was going to be a mixtape while I was compiling the songs in a playlist. But I’ll make no excuses. This mixtape is still bloody brilliant. I’m a pretty stingy guy when it comes to my iTunes song-rating system…but ALL of these songs are no less than 4 out of 5 stars…yeah…these songs are gooood.

Update: I just realized that the program I used to calculate the run-time of this mixtape is a piece of crap. The whole thing doesn’t fit on a CD (by about a minute)…which was a big disappointment to me. So, of course, I had to re-work the songs and make it fit. I eliminated a track (to be sneaked into a later volume) to make it fit on one CD, then I decided to take this opportunity to adopt the true cassette tape limit of 12 songs by making the last 2 songs bonus tracks that fit on the “B-Side.”  Those of you who downloaded the first, now discontinued, edition of Melodious Medlies – Volume 1 have a real gem in your hands. I’m sure 20 years down the road, it will be worth thousands, maybe millions, of dollars.

So from now on, Melodious Medlies will be made up of 12 main “A-Side” tracks with a “B-Side” of a couple bonus tracks. Both A and B-sides combined will still fit on a regular burned CD.

Now, wouldn’t it be awesome to make a mixtape with both the A and B sides filled to the brim? I agree…so I’m going to make my bigger “Bomb Diggity Jams” mixtapes 24 tracks, split evenly into A and B sides. A more relevant question would be: Does anyone but me care about all this? In a word, no. But I’m excited about it.

Tracklist for Melodious Medlies – Vol. 1

A-side:
1. The Beatles – “You Never Give Me Your Money”
2. The New Pornographers – “The Bleeding Heart Show”
3. The Postal Service – “Brand New Colony”
4. The Rolling Stones – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
5. The Format – “Dog Problems”
6. Sufjan Stevens – “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!”
7. Belle and Sebastian – “Your Cover’s Blown”
8. The Decemberists – “The Crane Wife 1 & 2”
9. Radiohead – “My Iron Lung”
10. Anathallo – “Hanasakajijii (Four: A Great Wind, More Ash)”
11. The Polyphonic Spree – “Section 24: The Fragile Army”
12. The Beatles – “The End”

Bonus B-Side:
13. Franz Ferdinand – “I’m Your Villain”
14. Silverchair – “Those Thieving Birds”

Download them all in a .zip file by going to the Divshare download page.

If you can’t download at the moment, or are too lazy and/or want to hear a sample first, here are the first 12 tracks streamed at my Muxtape page.

Why not stream the whole thing at Muxtape? ‘Cos 12 is the maximum number of tracks allowed on Muxtape — that being, more or less, the limit for one side of an actual cassette tape. I made my compilation with the CD-limit in mind…but I kind of like the retro cassette literal mix-tape concept. I might consider that for my future volumes…to pay homage to the mighty cassette tape.

Bonus Songs:

And just so no one rolls over in their graves or anything, I guess I have to give some representation to the O.G. experts at this multi-part song business:

Ludwig Van Beethoven – “Symphony #5 In C Minor, Op. 67 – 1. Allegro Con Brio”
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky – “Piano Concerto #1 In B Flat Minor, Op. 23”

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To Dad

This post is for National Blog Posting Month, which was brought to my attention by the lovely and hilarious Essaytch. They have something different every month and for April, the objective is to write a letter a day for a month. I’m obviously not writing a letter a day and I’m more than a week late. No matter…I’m participating. I don’t know how many I’ll do, but I plan on doing at least a handful (Quite literally five. Maybe I’ll do more.) Letter-writing is a very foreign activity for me. I actually don’t remember the last one I wrote. This should be fairly interesting.

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Dear Dad,

I figured since you’ve written me so many letters over the past few years, it’s probably time that I write you one. I realize this is in my blog and you’ll probably never come across it, and you have trouble with English, but whatever…it’s the thought that counts right?

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