It's no secret that I have been falling down on the job of blogging, but it's not like I've been doing nothing all this time. It's probably no coincidence that I happen to be blogging for the first time in 7 weeks on the day after I have finally seen the end of the last chapter of Heaven's Coin II.
The Croc's are taking over. Actually, I can't go into more detail than that for fear of my life. I want to tell you all about this seemingly colorful and comfortable threat, but I can't. In fact, I'm not even sure what's causing this epidemic. As to the cause, I can only hypothesize that's it's a new strain of the metrosexual virus that is infecting physically active, older males. At a place like the Institute for Astronomy such a virus is sure to spread at an alarming rate.
If you're confused about this entry so far, let me switch tracks completely in an attempt to regain your attention. Surely, everyone can empathize with me when I say that I've always found the classification of record at a music store to be vaguely dissatisfying. There's just something about the divisions: 90% of the records thrown into "Rock/Pop", and the remaining 10% divided among increasingly specific and/or confusing categories (what is new age exactly, and how is it different from world music?).
You might have guessed it; I have a solution to this problem. I would classify records by how they are used. Here are some example categories
"Music to Work To" - This one is pretty straightforward. It's music that doesn't grate on your ears, doesn't beckon you listen to some message, and in general doesn't require much of your attention. It captures just enough of your attention to keep your creative juices flowing and to provide you a minimal level of distraction drowning out bigger distractions while you work.
"Music to Break Up To" - Also simple to understand. Conveniently, provides single people with a venua for meeting each other. Potentially a reckless category choice with respect to rebounding.
"Music to Fall in Love To" - Not to be confused with the "Music to Make Out To" section. Records in this section generally portray life as hopeful, fun, and a good deal all around.
"Music to Do Drugs To" - Your garden variety psychadelia. Maybe some super-chill stuff for the pot smokers.
"Music That Goes With Red Wine" - Dust off the Perry Como if you want to enjoy a bottle of Chianti. Try some Diana Krall with a Pinot Noir.
"Music to Make People Think You're Cool" - Need to stay on top of the latest trends coming out of London, Amsterdam, and Berlin? Beat the Europeans and hipster kids to it in this section.
"Music That Gets You Pumped Without Annoying Your Neighbors" - Actually, it will annoy them, because anything played too loud at 7am is guaranteed to be annoying, even if it's "Superman" by Five for Fighting.
Of course there would be overlap in some of these, but there already is overlap in the current system so I don't see the problem with that. The real question is whether I could boil these categories into only a handful of fundamental activities. If not, this system is probably doomed to fail.