Obligatory College Football Playoff Blog

As you may well know, anyone who has a blog and even thinks about sports is legally required to offer their take on playoffs at the highest level of college football.

Failure to do so results in the revocation of your bloggers of america union card and a poke in the arm with a sharpened stick. To avoid such a horrible fate I’m going to provide my take now and also file all the necessary paper as proof of doing so.

Before we continue I must state something that will come as a shock to just about everyone, sports fans and non sports fans alike. The National Championship is stupid.

There.

I said it.

Light your torches, find your pitchforks and “come at me bro”.

Don’t get me wrong. Shiny crystal trophies are nice, but we’re talking about something that is completely out of your team's control. Something that is debated so much and has been  for so long, that when discussed in written form an acronym is used to describe it. “MNC” which stands for Mythical National Champion/Championship. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?*

That’s why i don’t get my undies in a bunch like my fellow Nebraska fans when the topic of Penn State in 94ish (if my memory is correct) or Michigan in 97 should get part of that that year’s “MNC”. I don’t care. We won all our games those years and that to me is awesome enough. So, if Michigan or Penn State want to put that year in big letters on their stadium somewhere under “National Champions”, good for them. I’ll still sleep tonight. They did everything they were supposed to, too. They won all of their games.

And don’t even get me started on teams that lose one or two games and still claim the MNC, lame. I’d argue those years shouldn’t even have a MNC. Especially when a two loss team claims it....ick.

Ever since I was old enough to listen to the talking heads on Saturday mornings debate which team really was the best in the nation, I began to grow more and more sick of the topic. To me, especially at that time, it was a bigger deal to beat Oklahoma, win the Big Eight conference, and go to the Orange Bowl. I liked this for several reasons.

• First, it didn’t matter if you were undefeated or not, didn’t matter if you stubbed your toe week two against someone and tarnished your undefeated season, you could always win the conference and go to the Orange Bowl.
• The conference rankings were never based on what some sportswriter in some town far away who never saw a Nebraska game thought of how good Nebraska was. It was all about wins and losses, head to head match-ups, and in rare cases tie-breakers.
• Same deal with the Coaches rankings....
• I always felt like it was our own little mini-world of college football. The Orange Bowl was our bowl, our championship...and even though we lost to a Florida team every year, it was still somehow special.

Another dirty little secret? Playoffs rarely determine who the best team is, especially in a single elimination tournament. Are you gonna try and tell me that the 9-7 New York Giants were really the best team in the NFL last year because they won the Super Bowl** ? The same Giants that at one point lost five out of six of their games including four games in a row? The same team that lost to the Washington Redskins twice? Nuh-uh sorry.

Or what about UConn who won the National Championship in basketball a few years back after finishing NINTH in their conference.....in short, playoffs don’t determine who the best team is, only who is on a roll at the end of the season.

To put it in yet another way, Bertrand Russell’s quote about war comes to mind; “War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

So I think of playoffs like this “Playoffs don’t determine who is best, only who is left”

All of this comes about as I write this, because the NCAA is considering a four team playoff at the end of the regular season. At first I was excited about this. I know, I know, I just got done griping about how playoffs don’t determine a champion, and I stand by that, they don’t. However, playoffs have one really important factor in their corner.....playoffs = more football, and I can’t ever have enough football.

Then I heard the local radio guys debating how those four teams would be determined and realized that a four team playoff wouldn’t put an end to the constant debate about “Who is #1” it only pushes the problem a tiny bit farther down the chain.

So, why did the old rich white guys in charge of college football's highest level finally change their tune?

• Well last year’s MNC featured a rematch of two teams from the same division of the same conference.
• A conference that has now had a team win the “National Championship” five years in a row. So no matter who won, it would be from the same conference....again.
• The game itself a rematch of a field goal miss/make fest that ended in a 9-6 overtime ‘thriller’.**
• It didn’t help that the game was hyped for months beforehand either....so, people were tired of hearing about the FIRST game even before it was played,...let alone the rematch in the MNC

All of this added up to less than stellar ratings for a college football MNC, which meant the fat cats finally got hit somewhere where they actually cared about,...the wallet.

So, now they are meeting in high rise offices, late into the night scrambling to find the perfect formula. Unfortunately, there isn’t one.

I’d argue that although the MNC this year sucked. Both as a match up and a game itself, I still have to admit that those were indeed probably the two best teams in the country. No combination of fancy computer formulas, voters, even playoffs can prevent a championship stinker once in awhile. How many Super Bowls can you remember that weren’t all that competitive? Had teams you didn’t care about?  Where the commercials were just ‘meh’?

What to do then? Well, in next week’s blog, I will detail my design for College football’s postseason. Keep in mind I don’t want to, but it’s another blog requirement, and I really don’t want to be poked with a sharp stick.

---

* No

**That was the game where your girlfriend shushed everyone during the commercials so she could hear what the talking baby said, then blabbed loudly during the actual game. Seriously dude, did you HAVE to bring her?

*** I fell asleep during the first quarter

How Car Insurance Makes Me Feel Old

This one requires a long walk folks, so if you’re up to it, grab my automated nacho shoveling device (hand) and join me on a journey to the land of um...feel,..um,....old-dom.

I find the overly competitiveness of car insurance companies to be quite comical. I’m reminded of this almost constantly, I’d venture to guesstimate that 2/3rds of all ads I currently see have to do with car insurance. On nearly every billboard, tv commercial, radio commercial, port-a-jon, not to mention the web, you are constantly being inundated with ads for car insurance.

You have the Geico Gecko, Cavemen, Progressives quarky “Flo”, State Farm, Farmers, All-State (with that black guy,...can’t think of his name), Esurance and even that little general guy . That little general guy seems kinda iffy, kinda scammy but that’s a topic for another day....

Those are just the companies I can name off the top of my head. YES, I’ve been so repetitively exposed to car insurance ads that I can name SEVEN of them off the top of my head, and even several of the mascots.

I find this level of over advertising funny in its specificness. It’s not insurance, it’s not cars, it’s specifically car insurance. And they are all out to save you oh-so-much money, or so they claim.

The best way I can explain why this specificness is so funny to me would be to say, imagine a world where dozens of giant companies existed that only sold salad forks. Not spoons, not knifes, not even forks in general, but specifically SALAD FORKS. Now imagine every advertisement you see pertains to how much money you could save per year on salad forks. That’s kinda how I see them.

Still with me? Still holding onto my nacho consumption aid (hand) ? Good.

All of this overly competitive advertising leads me to think of the only other example of completely oversaturated and seemingly unnecessary advertising in my life. The old long distance commercials. I can still hear the pitch echoing through the empty cavern that is my brain, “Just dial down the center! 1-800-C-O-L-L-E-C-T”

And now time for another jump, this old ad war makes me realize that kids today have no idea what calling collect means. Most live without landlines, and have no concept of what it was like living with a non cell phone in the house. To them, phone = cellphone, period.

They have no concept of local vs long distance, can’t fathom being tethered to not only the house you are in with your phone, but in my case, the hallway of said home. Like a dog on a chain in the backyard. You could only go as far as your curly plastic leash would let you.

Long distance was really damn important too:

Person A: I was attacked by a polar bear with laser beams for eyes and chain saws for arms! I need a tourniquet really bad could you ple-

Person B: (Politely covering the receiver of the phone*) It’s my grandma, long distance...

Person A: Oh, I’m SOOO SORRY!! Tell her I said ‘HI’

Then everyone would sit around bleeding to death from their polar bear related wounds and watch in awe as someone talked to someone else literally all the way OUTSIDE OF CITY LIMITS! Isn’t technology amazing?

Long distance was so important that it didn’t merely invade tv (before the days of the dvr so you couldn’t fast forward through the commercials!**), radio, billboards, busses, everywhere. These companies would even call you directly. They would normally call during dinner right after your mouth was full of celery and peanut butter.

Janet: Hi, I’m Janet***, calling from MCI, my job is to call people all over the U.S and get yelled at and pray that one out of every 100 yell fests ends in a sale so I can make an extra 25 cents this hour, how are you this evening sir? Are you happy with your current long distance provider?

You: (Mouth full of celeray and peanut butter) mmmmrgggrrmmmcrunchmmrrmmggnocalllistmggrm

Janet: Great! you’re all signed up for the ‘Eiffel Tower Plan’ it will cost twice as much as your current plan but you can now call Southern France for only 30 cents a minute!

Janet: (Forgetting to hang up the phone) HEY GUYS I GOT A SALE!!! I REALLY GOT A SALE!!

Then you would hang up and your wife or husband would yell at you for changing your family's long distance plan for the fourth time that week.

I know what you’re thinking,....but Grandpa Smitty, why didn’t you just ignore the phone call?

Oh you silly little humanling...you couldn’t NOT answer the phone! You just couldn’t, and I never knew why...I never got the chance. It could be the President or the Pope (prolly calling about your current long distance plan) or something you had no idea, and only ONE ringtone...that you couldn’t change....

I never risked not answering the phone, the consequences would be too dire. The only chance I would get would be when I was home alone, and it would most likely be my mom who, if I didn’t answer would be in a panic, because “WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER THE PHONE?, you can’t JUST NOT ANSWER THE PHONE!”

Not only did you not know who the phone call was from, but you didn’t know who it was FOR either. Some fancier kids had a magical device called “Caller ID” but we didn’t. Caller IDs were for pussies.

So if the call wasn’t for you# you had to perform the ‘call for someone else ritual’. You either had to just leave the phone there. This would leave the person on the other end dangling like a slinky hanging from the ceiling. Then you would frantically search the house for the person the caller wanted to speak with. The other option would be to just stand there and yell (because you were tethered there remember?) “MOM!!! PHONE!!!!” and hope they heard you.

I forgot to mention you had to say ‘May I ask who is calling’ and if you didn’t the person you finally found hiding in the attic would sigh and say, “Why didn’t you ask who is calling?!”

If the person wasn’t there another ritual began, you had to say “I’m sorry he/she can’t come to the phone right now can I take a message?”

You had to say it like that otherwise this person would know you were home alone and they would come over and eat you or something...

Then you would pretend to take their message and forget about the phone call entirely until your mom or dad got another call from the person who was now angry. And then you would get grounded/yelled at. Good times.

If no one was home a device with a little midget cassette## in it would save useless rambling messages on a strip of magnetic tape. Then everyone would stand around the machine and try to guess who called.

Family Member One: “That sounds like our neighbor down the street....”
Family Member Two: “No, no that was totally Mr. Blahblah....”
Family Member Three: “Weren’t you expecting a call from Mr. Soandso?”

No definitive answer would come so the only sensible action would be to call every suspect and leave messages on their machines thus spreading the virus to everyone.....in case you hadn’t guessed, answering machines were awesome.

If the person you were trying to call didn’t have an answering machine the phone would just ring and ring forever until you hung up. The person you called would never know you called. No one could immediately contact anyone who say, ventured out to buy groceries. Even scarier, if they didn’t have an answering machine no one knew where they were,....at all! (I just blew your mind didn’t I?)

Without an answering machine that person might as well have been on Mars.

FBI: I’m sorry ma’am, we can’t find your father

Poor Woman: Oh no! Why not!

FBI: He doesn’t have an answering machine,....

Everyone:

FBI: He could literally be ANYWHERE

So you would just keep calling them, every 15 minutes and hope they hadn’t died. Why 15 minutes? Because that’s just what you DID, kinda like the reason you always had to answer the phone.

You would give it a month or so before you really started to worry.

Another fun game I liked to call ‘Phone Chicken’ was when everyone in the house heard the phone ring and everyone assumed everyone else was going to get it. With each passing ring the tension rose until either everyone answered the phone at the same time or no one answered resulting in the following argument:

    Family Member A: HOW COULD YOU NOT ANSWER THE PHONE!!!???
    Family Member B: You were closer!
    Family Member C: Well I just figured it was Mr. Whoever, he usually calls this time of day...
    Family Member A: Well @#$%! lets go check the answering machine....

And so we come to the end of our journey, maybe you forgot where we started, or don’t really know how you ended up here, but now you hopefully have a better idea of why everytime I see a car insurance commercial I feel old.

I make the quick jump from car insurance to feeling old, because no one under the age of 10 will know the true importance of a long distance call, or any of the lost rituals involved with the infamous “Home Phone”.

But at what point is the cut off? This is a fun game, sit around a table with a group of people of all ages, a cell phone starts to ring, the older phone vets will all become tense,...memories of ‘Phone Chicken’ still aching in their bones, the younger ones have no problem letting it go to voicemail......the vets thinking ‘MY GOD! ISN’T YOUR KID GONNA ANSWER HER PHONE! HOW CAN SHE NOT ANSWER IT!!!???’


* = YAH! I KNOW! The phone went all the way from your ear to your mouth! Huge!
** = Simply barbaric huh? And yet I survived...
*** = "Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty",...yep a Janet Jackson reference no one will get,...good for me...
# = everyone in the house shared the SAME phone! Is your mind blown yet?
## = sorry grandkids all teach you about cassettes in another blog....

Sports, Cheese, Bullet Points and Whine

My brothers fiance asked me recently whatever happened to my blog. This was a good question but it was asked on Facebook and I deleted my account shortly thereafter.

I feel that it was a good enough question to answer and in the process could perhaps kick start my blog again.

Another aspect I liked about her question was that I could use one of my nerdly favorite um...thingys..struggling to find the word at the moment...but that “thingy” is a bulleted list.

Reasons my blog went derelict for 4ish months:

• Lack of motivation/time. Specifically the alignment of having both time available and the motivation to write at the same time just never seemed to occur.
• Lack of internet access. I haven’t had internet access for some time and I got tired of making arrangements to post blogs from other places. I have a plan now though...

There are more than likely more reasons, but three is a good number. If you only have two bullet points why bother..Am-I-rite? ...but three...well that just looks snazzy. Oh! Thought of another one....

• I said from the get go that the blogging had to remain fun for me to continue and limiting myself to non-sports related stuff made it more of a chore. I got caught up in trying to write what I thought people would like instead of what I wanted to write, the end result being nothing got written at all, which in my opinion is worse.

(whew! that was a good one...yay bullets! )

So from now on I will blog, I will blog about what I want to write about. If me writing at length about how when putting together an offense in football I prefer a tall, pocket passing style quarterback, bores you....well....tough titties for you. I’ll just email you the next time I slip on a banana peel and fall down a flight of stairs and decide to blog about it.

So stay tuned folks, I plan on posting something every Wednesday (at least that’s my goal) evening and you can thank Brittany for that.

A Song From The Present Future

Several weeks ago I was sleeping in my recliner as I often accidentally do. My trusty DVR had begun recording the triumphant return of “Beavis & Butthead”. The sudden change in programming woke me up. The familiar opening guitar riff of the show accompanied by the guttural grunting laughs of the two idiots from my teen years soothed me in a strangely joyous manner.

I needed soothing as I awoke with a feeling I am all too familiar with. The feeling of something going wrong in my lungs. A sensation I have difficulty describing but not a pleasant one I can assure you.

After the video, I dragged myself to bed. You can imagine how going to sleep with this video in your head can affect the way you sleep.

The next morning I found the video in its entirety and immediately felt the need to break it down and share with the world how I felt about every second of the video. While such a task is impossible (as I have discovered) I did my best to cobble together as many of my thoughts as possible and present them to you.

Combine all of the above with the state of my musical collection during my last blog and the birth of my interest in this song was quite strange indeed.

I will start by saying little has changed in the world of “Beavis & Butthead”. The two idiots remain mostly the same all these years later. The only change seems to be in the way in which their show is presented.

Instead of only making fun of music videos between their various adventures they also make fun of the various lame and I would argue culturally damaging shows like “Jersey Shore”, “Sixteen and Pregnant” and “True Life”. Still Beavis and Butthead take the time to make fun of the occasional music video on their show. I think it’s the only time that music videos are shown on the network. I know that may seem like a sarcastic exaggeration but I think it’s closer to the truth. The entire “no music videos on MTV” joke/rant/hipster upheaval has been done and re-done so many times by so many people I won’t do it here.

Originally I thought it important to hear the song before watching the video, but I have since reversed that notion. Still, I think it important to see the video in it’s original condensed form (sorry, the link has since been removed on YouTube) the same way I did, after midnight on a show that seems to have delightfully not changed much since the 1990’s.

I love Beavis’s “Shouldn’t have sent that kid to Hogwarts” comment.

And now the entire version, which I had to dig up after my strange first encounter with my song in the early morning hours.

A good video needs several elements in order for it to live up to my standards of a great video, I’ll list them below and discuss how “First Of The Year” measures up.

1. Good Song: This is an obvious one, but arguably the most important, if I can’t stand the song then the video has little to no shot of stopping me from not even finishing it let alone counting it among the best. Obviously this song makes the cut (more on that later).

2. The song has to enhance the video and vice versa: This video does an excellent job of this. The video provides the grim setting while the song makes the little girl’s actions seem more epic and powerful.

3. No band performance: Most videos, I’d say at least 90% either have a band playing the song or try and cut back and forth between the band performing and whatever the video is trying to develop on its own. This is a big pet peeve of mine. It can be done, but it’s very difficult. Lucky for this video, we’re dealing with a techno band here. I think it’s not a coincidence that some of the best mind bending videos I can think of are done with techno/industrial songs. After all, not much performing to show, unless you’re into watching guys push buttons on a mixer behind a mountain of stereo cable.

4. Video should mesh with the music: This is what I think this video does best. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video do such a good job of matching with the video. Every force field blast, ever musical twist and reverb is matched with a similar action on screen. Even different segments of the song match the musical tone, from the little girl skipping down the street to the beat of the happy tune at the beginning of the song to the antagonists broken doll laden nightmare, to the song’s climatic black monster ending....the list goes on and on.

5. Don’t be too obvious: I’d almost say this is the only thing the video doesn’t do well. Normally I don’t like to be hit over the head with the meaning. I’m not stupid, you don’t have to spell it out for me. For the most part it is blatantly clear what’s going on in this video. The twist about half way through the video helps save things a great deal. The Viewers entire concept of what you think is going to happen is changed with the songs juxtaposed cry of “CALL 9-11 NOW!!!” So it works in that respect. I also think the end of the video where the last hash mark is added,.......I don’t think that means what everyone else thinks it means, and I’ll keep my little theory to myself....After all, having your own personal secret theory only adds to the mystique of this song.

On top of everything else this video came into my life around the time the Penn State scandal was breaking. A story so prevalent in the news and all other forms of media I won’t bother to link things here. The timeliness of this work added to the sweet revenge aspect this piece has and increased the already surreal nature with which I saw it for the first time.

Timing with current events aside, as I mentioned above one really can’t have a good video without a good song and there is plenty to love with this song.

I love how heavily percussive the song is. I’ve always felt a deep connection to percussion, and the complexity of this songs percussion is simply mind blowing to me. For most, probably too much is going on, especially if they are simply listening to the song and not watching the video.

I may regret saying this later, mostly because it will never happen. But I enjoy this song because it sounds like the type of music I would aim for if I ever was able to create music of my own. A lifetime dream I’m almost guaranteed to never fulfill. The fact that I have tried makes the technical achievement that is this song all the more impressive.

I threw around the term ‘music’ a lot above, after listening to the song I think a lot of people would take issue with that. What they hear is simply a car crash of noise, blips and bloops. The fact that most would not appreciate this kind of song makes it more personal, and therefore more special to me. I would go as far as to say that my editor wouldn’t like this song either. If I were to say such a thing and if such a statement were true, it would add to my enjoyment of the song. However in this hypothetical scenario the fact that I would’ve said that would cause him to say he liked the song/video just to be difficult,...so therefore, I say nothing of the sort here....

I love how the song builds up, especially after you’ve listened to the song before, you know the explosive “CALL 9-11 NOW!” is coming. Therefore the song gets better the more I listen to it, instead of tiring itself out like other songs I fall in love with do.

Love is a strong word, but I also love how this song sounds like a song from the future, like how a song was supposed to sound like in the year 2011. If someone had played a collection of recycled pop music crap and then this song for me when I was growing up in the 80’s I would without a doubt mark this song as how I thought music would sound in the mystical far off 2010’s. So to me the song is like music from a different version of the present. A present where music continued to evolve and grow instead of regurgitate itself every year in search of cash.

Lastly, I feel the song stands on it’s own quite well. First off, the song is a lot longer than the video version and completes in a nice neat package working it’s way gradually to the happy melody of the beginning of the song.

Another aspect keeping this song standing on its own two feet is that I am able to picture a separate mental image despite my countless views of the video. This is a bonus as normally this is not the case. I recall Lars from Metallica commenting once that before videos it was more fun to have your own mental image of a song, then with the advent of videos he argued your vision is replaced with something else. While this is true for most songs that become singles and therefore videos, most songs on an album do not, leaving room for songs like NIN’s “Reptile” painting a very vivid picture in my mind. I’ve even thought of writing a blog on how I would shoot the video for that song.

I don’t like to throw around the word “Epic” and tend to despise those that do, but in this case I truly feel that song and video combined “First of The Year” is truly epic. Perhaps that’s why I had such a difficult time completing this blog. I felt the need to make the accompanying blog epic as well, or at least worthy of its subject. Perhaps I failed there, or perhaps I didn’t. I do however know this, I’m glad I happened upon “First of The Year” and happy I happened upon it in such a deliciously strange atmosphere for my first viewing.






Follow me on Twitter: @TheSmittyBlog

Musical Civil War

I listen to music almost constantly, at work, at the gym, at home,...while I write this very blog... therefore I must say music is a huge part of my life. I find this odd as I can’t even tune a guitar. Still, I spend the majority of my waking moments listening to music.

Normally it starts on my trusty iPod Touch. I like to jump to my complete list of songs and shuffle them. Eventually something comes up that fits my current mood, or I haven’t heard for a long time, which leads me to that song’s album which I then listen to. It’s a fun system, I like it,...just one problem...my account has been mysteriously been banned by Apple.

I’m not sure what I did to warrant such actions but the black turtle neck wearing hipster fascists felt I deserved it. I’m guessing it had something to do with me having the audacity to move the music I paid for from one computer to another (I know, I’m an outlaw...an animal,....out of control.....). So my iPod Touch is stuck at (and will always be stuck at) 2533 songs.

The alternative rests on my Amazon cloud account, a mishmash of songs which didn’t all upload from my computer. Several songs from each album made it but not all of them. It seems as though the upload software timed out during the main upload. I suppose such things can happen when you attempt to upload 2500 songs. The trouble is that the account thinks all the songs HAVE been uploaded so a re-upload doesn’t find the missing songs. The only work around for this is that each album has to be re-uploaded individually. A long process I began a long time ago, but am not even close to being finished. To top it all off the songs just won’t upload. Conveniently for the fruit people most of those songs I purchased through my Apple device.....fuckers.....won’t upload to Amazon (which takes about anything) because the songs are in some sort of weird format/encryption/whatever. So I either have to re-buy all the songs that I bought from Apple or acquire them in some other manner,....and the music industry wonders why so many people pirate music....idiots.

I find myself straddling a deep ravine, music on two different sides. Both unsatisfactory for one reason or another. Ideally I’d like all my music on Amazon as their cloud format would enable me to get to my music from any machine and thus prevent my canyon predicament from ever happening again but the process is long and daunting. Songs that are on both my apple and my phone (Amazon Cloud), songs that are on one but not the other, songs that are on the apple but not movable to the cloud for one stupid fruit related reason or another, songs that have been moved, songs that haven’t, songs that can be moved but haven’t yet. Multiply all of that by 2500 and you get where I’m coming from.

The tin foil hat wearing conspiracy loving version of me thinks that since the days of hard media changing (records, eight tracks, cassettes, cds...) are over the industry is scrambling to figure out a way to make you buy the same music over and over and over again like they used to be able to until music became available solely through digital means. Perhaps “Conspiracy Theory Smitty (tm)” is right, perhaps he’s not. Whatever the case I find the whole ordeal disparaging. I can’t begin listening to music without the black cloud of the daunting task of music indexing/sorting/downloading/transferring/decrypting/unfucking staring back at me. Sort of like I can’t go into the garage without thinking of all the home related projects I’m neglecting. All of this is compounded by my recent financial troubles which have forced me to turn off my Internet.

It’s into this troubled civil war like hellscape that is my music collection a dark, ominous song found it’s way recently. The growing unlikelyhood (is a word? fuck it, it is now) that I would find new music I would like makes finding this song all the more special. But that’s a topic for my next blog. Actually that was the topic for THIS blog but I got too wrapped up in the whole canyon/ravine/civil war music collection thing. Something I obviously needed to work through......

For now I’m back to listening to my iPod Touch and dreaming of the day when my music, ALL of my music will be back together again. Like long lost twins who discover they hold a coffee cup the same quirky way (isn’t that neat? *YAWN*).

I know there are people out there who will say “why don’t you do such and such?” or didn’t you hear about Apple’s new “cloud” setup? For some reason I’m skeptical about Apples “Cloud” I’m guessing constant syncing is still required and if you bat an eyelash the wrong way all your music will be synced out of existence (not that I’m bitter or anything).

To address the “Such and such” I’d respond by saying,...”Okay, STOP before explaining the long Rube Goldberglike process I must partake in and just do it FOR me if it is so truly easy....be my guest, I’m gonna back up everything I have first, and if you need me I’ll be eating nachos and watching football, let me know how it goes....

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I think I’m done with my blog’s Facebook page (no-one seemed that interested)

And I’ve all but forgotten about my Google+ page as has everyone else....