This week though, I was inspired a little bit when I heard “I don’t want to wait” by Paula Cole. It’s not a wildly great song, but it stood out to me (in the way that something you have been seeing or doing for several years can hit you in the face like a brick one day) for some of the points it may or may not even be trying to make.

I don’t even want to try to make an accurate guess at what exactly Ms. Cole means by some of the lyrics in this song. At this point in time, I’m so busy that I just can not do so. Near as I can tell, she marries a dude, who later goes to fight in the war, and comes back (to his new kids, who he hasn’t met) at least a little bit emotionally damaged.

The part that got me, and I’m at work and do not have time to listen to the song again so I may quote this wrong, was the part where she talks about the dude finally figuring out that he doesn’t want to be an absent father, he wants to live his life right now with the people around him.

Over the past several years, I and some of the people around me have spent a lot of time living in the future. Talking about what we should do today in terms of what it could mean in the future. Even worse, I and a bunch of people had spent much of our time at the university saying, essentially, “I can’t wait until it’s over — everything is horrible right now, and will be better at some indeterminate point in the future.”

What I’ve learnt now that I am on the very cusp of graduation, which had previously been my “it’ll be so awesome then” goalpost, is that it’s not very different, at least not yet, and even though it isn’t very different, it’s still fun, and I should revel in that fun while I’ve got the opportunity to do so.

Or something like that.

There are, of course, reasons to run old versions of Firefox. If you happen to be rocking an NT 4 computer, Firefox 2 is the most recent version you can run on that machine, but I suspect at this point if you are rocking an NT 4 computer, you understand that it is not modern and should not be thought of as a computer that can be used to do modern work.

Here’s where I have been forced to think about — Windows NT4 is actually not that bad for “productivity” — it has Office 97 and can run as new as Office XP, it will run the Microsoft file format converters for Office 2007-2011 documents, and I will concede that Firefox 2 will successfully use many web sites I access, in addition to mobile or simple versions of services (such as plain HTML Gmail, Outlook Web Access Lite, m.twitter.com and m.facebook.com.) Windows NT 4 will even run an RDP client and PuTTY, for my ssh access needs.

Ultimately, I don’t think that “be productive” is even part of my argument when it comes to discussions with people who are trying to justify continuing to use old, slow, insecure computers and software that force them to change how they would otherwise have naturally worked. My argument is (and has been for a while) that for those of us with modern computers, we should work reasonably hard to ensure that our free, network connected software, which improves in stability and performance with every release, is kept up to date.

This is especially true now that, in the past few months and years, we seem to have come to the point at which Macintoshes are popular enough that writing a piece of malware for them (frequently using Flash or Java as the method by which the malware gets in) is something that people are focusing on.

It’s true that there are probably not people out there actively writing malware for Windows NT 4.0, but that doesn’t mean Windows NT 4.0 is appropriate for a production environment, or even a home environment, even if you happen to mainly visit web sites that work in Firefox 2, and happen to use applications and file formats that are compatible with Windows NT 4.0.

The problem that comes up — or will come up — is that I personally happen to love Windows NT 4.0. The difference is that while I do like NT4, I am not about to start using it as my primary computing environment, or even worse, farm it out to other people as their primary computing environment.

This brings me back to my more modern stuff. It is moderately well known in my Internet circles that I am a huge proponent of regularly upgrading computer systems. Typically, my justification for this is that modern computers will be easier to maintain, it’ll be easier to move any amount of data forward when you only have to move it from one version of an app or operating system to the next, and of course any problems that a user encounters are likely to be supported by the vendor.

“But that’s just the problem!” many people will reply. “The vendor should support their product for [a very long time].” People will bring up the bad example of how the Mac Plus somehow received software updates for a ridiculously long time, and how you can easily install Windows 7 on decade old x86 laptops, thus enabling them (or some other entity) to extend their investment in some old hardware or software. Arguably, if you want to talk about long support cycles, Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM are the best places to look. DEC Alpha computers from the early ’90s will all run the most current version of OpenVMS (which has survived two acquisitions — Compaq and Hewlett Packard), and of course IBM has also got fairly epic support cycle for certain pieces of equipment.

I hear people talk a lot about things that still do what they need, and have been curious as to what people interpret their “needs” as being, and what it means when they think x and such old computer will meet those needs. At point blank: I can think of very few, if any, home or small office workloads which have truly not changed at all, in such a way as an old computer will really meet all of the needs of that workload with no problems whatsoever. The biggest reason I can ever think of to allow somebody to use an excessively old computer (or any computer with excessively old software) is that they are either using an incredibly expensive (and discontinued) piece of scientific or industrial machinery, or that whatever work/play they are doing does not require the use of a network connection, and doesn’t involve any kind of multimedia, audio or graphics of any kind.

And I’m not going to say that there’s no such thing as a legitimate use for an older computer. Indeed, there are plenty — I’m just saying that most of the computer hobbyists who try to claim this do not actually have these encapsulated needs.

Keep in mind, this is all different from merely having an older computer. That’s totally separate and usually really neat. I like having older machines around, and I like the fact that if I had a Windows NT 4.0 computer around, it would be able to do some things for me. But I’m not trying to tell somebody I am okay with Windows NT 4.0 as the OS on my only computer.

All of that having been said: Go ahead and do yourself a favor and upgrade to the latest version of Firefox if you haven’t. If you’re for whatever reason morally opposed to the latest version of Firefox, you should switch to another modern browser.

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I still absolutely love these two songs from this movie.

Speaking of July (or in German, Juli…)

Anyway. Haben wir jetzt ein Perfekte Welle (as performed by Juli). (eh, eh?)

Anyway, this week it is busy, so, here, have a Cascada Documentary.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Also, have a new Cascada song!

This came up because I was recently getting lunch with one of my friends when a Maná song came n the radio in the restaurant where we were, and I mentioned to her that I basically can’t get enough Maná. She said that she was sure it was possible. My response? “Challenge accepted.” For several weeks I’ve been listening to almost nothing but Maná. It was inevitable that after listening to their songs for three or four weeks, I was going to write about them for Song of the Week.

And so, it surprised me when I went to search for one of my favorite Maná songs on Youtube, to find that it’s about throwing things, sexual harassment, and domestic abuse. With my rudimentary knowledge of like five Spanish words, and the way the song sounds, I had been really sure that Angel de amor had been about finding love or about an angel who delivers love unto the people. Nope. Domestic abuse most of the way through, punctuated only by the sexual harassment, and then love is found at the very end, however

Don’t get me wrong: I like Maná a lot. I’ve heard or seen a theory somewhere that Americans really like guitars and drums, and this particular holds a lot of credence for me, because almost as soon as I heard some of the songs from Maná’s fairly recent albums, Amar es Combatir and Arde el Cielo, I knew that both would be the types of albums that I could listen to over and over. In fact, Maná, along with a bunch of other Spanish-language musicians represent a genre or just general grouping that I’m almost always excited to go back to.

Another of my favorite songs with a video, Labios Compartidos, seems to be less about abuse and more about remembering a past love. It’s mostly free of violence, too! Even though it’s not about angels (or doesn’t have them in its title) an angel does show up, which is kind of confusing to me.

Every time I see a different Maná video, I feel like I’m entering the dangerous and sexy world of Spanish language music. I don’t know why I was so surprised though. American and even Canadian music videos are at least as bad in most cases. (Hi, Britney Spears.)

The notable exception, thus far, is Arde el Cielo, which rather than being about abuse, seems to be about the state of the world at large, and environmentalism. And also, Kim Jong Il (who is seen in the video looking at things.)

Getting into their new albums — things haven’t changed much. Physical contact, breaking up and running away, and then revenge by becoming a rock star are the big visual themes in Mi Reina del dolor. The new album has a lot of fairly similar sounding songs.

Maná, as we learn from the culture database, has been active since 1970s. In 1978 they were founded with the name Green Hat Spies, but renamed themselves quickly to Sombrero Verde, to focus on their Latin roots. The band is relatively stable, a few members have joined and dropped off, but that hasn’t stopped them from having a contemporary and stable sound, although it has evolved a little bit, mainly once the ’80s went by and synthesizers became slightly less necessary, as a sound. I do really like their album from 1987 — though the first time I listened to it, I definitely felt myself going “You fought the law and the law won?”

Anyway, that’s Maná. They have so many albums, most of them are worth listening to. There was more I wanted ot say, but I’ve long forgotten what it was exactly.

A lot of musicians have a theme. For some of them, it’s pretty straightforward, even though they’re not beating you over the head with it. Artists like this include Lady Gaga’s theme of “I am crazy” and Ke$ha’s theme of “I love to dance!” along with Britney Spears’ theme of “I want to have sex, and also dance party!”

I’ve not yet found any musician with a stronger or more straightforward theme than Marina and the Diamonds, who talks pretty directly in every single song about identity. Here’s how straightforwardly she lays it out. The first time I listened to her 2010 album “The Family Jewels” with Glenn and Sarah, it was as Glenn was lowering the volume that I blurted “Wow, she talks a lot about identity doesn’t she?” and Glenn then proceeded to scream “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BRAIN!!!”

Marina has a lot going for her, in terms of musicians I am going to like. For example, she was born in Wales and lives and performs mainly in England. (Fairly standard biographical data from The Cultural Encyclopedia.) She’s a few years older than I am, having been born in 1985. Her musical career started in with loads of auditions as she was (as she puts it) “delusional with drive.” She even dressed as a man and auditioned for a reggae boy band.

The England bit of her background is what I tend to find the most interesting. I have long forgotten with whom I’d been discussing this, but England produces a lot more artists with an unconventional or experimental style. Or maybe more accurately: in England, an unconventional or experimental musician is much more likely to get widely popular than they are here in the United States. La Roux comes to mind here. The whole category can be described as “Ladies who aren’t conventionally beautiful to Americans but who have made extremely fun music with awesome music videos and have gotten popular in America, possibly in large because of the Internet.” Just look at that hair. It’s something in the water that just seems to make Brits more likely to sing about slightly less generic stuff, and it’s fantastic.

For all of her complicated (or just different) themes, Marina still manages to produce fairly poppy. Most of the time, if I’m not actively paying attention, or I’ve been listening to Marina a lot over a week or so, then some of the more sinister meanings of her lyrics will escape me. It’s very much the type of stuff I like listening to when I’m walking around, or working at my computer — I can pontificate the meaning of the lyrics, and think along with Marina about whether or not I’m satisfied with an easy ride, or I can just have something that’s easy to bounce along with — even her relatively slow songs.

The album starts strong with Are You Satisfied? continues with Shampain which is followed by one of the slower songs, I Am Not A Robot. I’m not going to provide a track listing for the album, but I will mention that she is at least coauthor on every song, which is pretty impressive for a pop musician, and I will also mention that it’s an album I can listen to all the way through. (Side-note about listening to albums all the way through: Years ago, this was a huge accomplishment for me, and it wasn’t to be taken lightly when I found an album I could or wanted to listen to all the way through. These days, it’s every other album I find, just because I find new stuff on a fairly infrequent basis, and because I tend to find artists (especially non-American artists) all of whose stuff I like.

Hollywood is one of Marina’s more interesting songs, especially when you consider the video, which is essentially her hanging out at what must look to English folks as a stereotypical American high school or college party, especially one that happens before or after a football game. The song documents her obsession with American culture (real or contrived for the purposes of the song, I’m not sure) along with interactions she has had with people that lead her to the conclusion that, essentially, American culture is weird. It’s odd (and illuminating, for me as an American) to look at the song and have a glimpse of what the rest of the world thinks of us. I’m not sure if this helps or hurts the cause, but to me, the party looked relatively fun at least.

Back on track: one of Marina’s interactions was with a Polish girl who wanted to become a Hollywood wife, even though she was smart and had a variety of other qualities that means she could be successful doing whatever else. The other interaction documented by the song is her appearance at the Los Angeles International Airport, where she was told by somebody (presumably an agent, maybe a TSA employee) first that she looked like Shakira, then like Catherine Zeta Jones. I’m not going to talk to whether or not she actually does look like “Shakira, no, Catherine Zeta” — but I will identify with her desire for a unique identity.

Oh No is just a really fun song, and the music video makes it even more fun. The video, which is definitely a Marina video– stylistically, seems to be about shopping, outfits, being famous, and eating sandwiches made of money. The lyrics of the song are about Marina projecting a very strong image of power and strength in an effort to get people to believe in an image of what she wanted to be seen as (“the best”) rather than how she felt (“the worst.”)

I do like the bits that talk about Marina knowing exactly what she wants to be — I’m not going to say that I’m completely as sure as she is, but I definitely approve of anybody who is so sure of their own life. It’s kind of refreshing, in a time when most of my peers are talking about having no idea what they want to do with their lives, and when I, too, am still formulating that plan. Marina has it down, even more than most people who are already famous musicians. Although to those musicians’ credit, maybe they’re just doing it for the sake of a song, or all they’re unsure of is who they love the most.

I Am Not a Robot was actually the song that prompted me to find more of Marina’s work and share it with Glenn, back in 2010. The song had appeared on a Slacker Radio station I had been listening to, which focused on music that is popular in Britain. I believe it was called “British Pop Hits” or “Popular in England.” Anyway, I went on her YouTube page after the fact and found out that indeed, her songs are great. It wasn’t until Glenn and Sarah and I were on our way to a movie that I made the decision to buy her album through iTunes, however. (Odd choice, I know — it didn’t really jive with what we were seeing, which was Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe, but it was fun nonetheless.) The original video, shown here, is great. Who tars themselves in glitter for a video about robots? Marina Diamandes does.

Here, I’ve chosen to leave out the video of Mowgli’s Road, even though it’s on YouTube, just because that video mainly consists of Marina dancing around with accordion appendages. It’s a great video, but I haven’t got enough to say about it to merit putting it inline here.

So… that’s Marina and the Diamonds’ existing album. She’s got a new album coming out in a month or so. Maybe I’ve got the date marked on my calendar, because I intend to buy it. Here’s one of the new songs:

I first heard it maybe two weeks ago in a grocery store, and tagged it with my phone — mainly because I already had it out for the song that had been playing before. It appealed to me for its sound, and ht stayed in my mind, in part because I put it on my phone, and in part because I hadn’t heard of Nicole Sherzinger before. And so, I started searching the Internet Culture Database.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. As per the Internet Culture Database, she is “well known as the lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls” and also was a background singer in a ’90s band. In fact, this song isn’t even new. It came out anywhere between six and twelve months ago.

Just for fun, I pulled five of her other songs from 2007 and today, and oddly enough, like none of them. This happens a lot to me, an artist gets pulled into a specific format, then does one song that I really like. It turns out some of PCD’s stuff isn’t the worst ever, but most of it isn’t something I would have looked for on my own, and I’m probably going to delete their albums after I give them a single listen-through just to verify that it is indeed not something I’d normally collect.

Anyway, here’s the song. I like it a lot — it’s thematically pretty similar to something from, say, Katy Perry or P!nk, which is to say, it’s a break-up song. It’s not a very complicated song, she’s going and it’s unlikely that you’ll get her back, so don’t hold your breath. I say it a lot and I’m going to say it again: it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Music is a funny thing and I would claim I just haven’t heard or thought of any worth writing about in the past few days, but that would be a total lie. On the contrary, I’ve heard lots of music, and have failed to have free time in the right way such that writing about it made sense.

I had thought briefly about some of the new music I have heard in the last week. Some of it is pretty good and I even think I’ve caught some of it on the upward trend, which means I can write about it and subject my retail-working roommates to it without their knowing yet that it’s worth their hate.

And then an even worse idea struck: smooth jazz.

As so many of these posts do, this one is centered around a different time in my life. One where I lived in Washington State and really frequently cruised the FM dial. I did so on all kinds of radios, from a Sony Walkman to my large stereo to a ridiculous little clock/radio/phone thing which I am pretty sure at this point I only had because it seemed rather work-like. (I did use its alarm functionality for a year or two, until being old killed it.)

Anyway. Up in Seattle, when we lived there, I used to listen to KWJZ on 98.9. (Woefully, dead.) More than one year, their sampler CD landed in our mailbox. I won’t say I listened to it the most, especially because I think I may already have given that distinction to four or five different music formats.

Smooth jazz has always been great music to leave on in the background while doing other things or to put on when it’s time to calm down in the evening for sleep. I used to leave my radio turned on as I was going to sleep, and (this was of course before I had any significant amount of music on my computers, or a low powered device that was suitable to leave running just for the purposes of playing music.)

Over the years my involvement with finding new smooth jazz music has slowed, but every once in a while I look back at my collection and find one or more of the songs that were on that sampler CD.

Marc Antoine, as it turns out, was on the Smooth Jazz station a lot, and has a few pretty good albums. I can listen to most of them straight through because one of the (maybe) more unique aspects of Smooth Jazz as a whole genre is that it’s really hard to find any objectionable songs, if you happen to appreciate the genre. Near as I can tell, it’s unique to the genre — at least for me. Maybe it’s just that when I’m listening to jazz of the smooth variety, I am so disconnected from the actual music that I’m just not bothering to think about what song is playing. I do know that I tend to listen to other types of music more actively either listening for words when I’m listening to German and Japanese language music, or as I’m singing along and dancing to one of my favored pop songs.

Of the songs on The Very Best of Marc Antoine, I find Sunland to be the most fun — It’s possible this is just because I was familiar with it specifically first, or just because it appeals to me as the ideal smooth jazz song. It’s completely non-vocal, but is still interesting for somebody who is actively listening.

The death of smooth jazz radio stations around the country is a little bit sad. Maybe not surprising, but sad nonetheless. I suspect it has equal parts to do with the advent of customizable Internet “radio,” changes in the way stations are rated, and the realization that some things (such as pop and adult contemporary) are just generally more profitable.

The main challenges I’ve found with listening to more smooth jazz in modern times is that I don’t live in a town with such a station on the FM dial, and honestly, these days it just has such a small share of my mind. It has been long enough since I listened to smooth jazz on a regular basis that I don’t normally think about it when I’m sitting at my desk or hopping on the bus and am browsing through my Slacker stations or thumbing through the Zune marketplace. Potentially though, now that the thought has occurred, I will be more likely to head to that section or one of those stations and discover what’s new and popular in the genre.