Hello Again

Greetings, lapsed readers! It is I, the oft-silent Josh Lewis!

I’m very aware of the fact that I haven’t blogged in a month. No, I wasn’t going for some sort of record or anything (although I may have made one). I was just busy and distracted. Mostly distracted.

I’ve got plenty to tell you. I guess this entry is really just a “hello” more than anything else. The other tidbits will be broken out into their own entries, cuz I’m all orderly like that! Let’s get this narcissistic rampage started, baby!

Hello.

Sufjan at Second

It’s official: Sufjan Stevens has recently passed the Beastie Boys on my last.fm artists ranking page for 2nd place. He’s worked hard. He deserves it.

It doesn’t look like anyone will pass Beck anytime soon, however.

Trivia: #11 and #12 are actually the same artist. If the scores were combined, they would rocket him to spot #4, bumping U2 down a notch. Here’s a fun game: see if you can figure out who he is and why I like him.

Also of note: I’m #60 on my own list. Yay me!

Vacation

“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.”

– Elbert Hubbard

Location, Location, Location

A lightbulb blew out in the hallway ceiling fixture tonight, so I got on a chair, unscrewed the cap and carefully lifted down the frosted glass dish that covered the dead lightbulb. Inside I found a dead lightbulb, but I also found a little dead spider, hanging from the last web he ever made.

I’m sure he was a perfectly capable spider in every other way, but apparently he didn’t realize that building your web inside a light fixture that’s sealed off in every direction means you probably won’t catch many flies. No flies means no spider. I guess he should’ve rethought where he built his web.

Makes me rethink where I’m building mine.

Costumes

Steph and I dressed up for Halloween. A good time was had by all.

Dick Hoyt and Son

I saw this on Digg. Read the article first and then watch the video at the bottom of the page. It’s just breathtakingly inspiring and wonderful. Warning: story may cause grown men to cry.

Musical Starvation

When I moved from one computer to another last spring, I accidentally erased my iTunes metadata. In other words, while I kept all my songs, I didn’t keep the information that told me when I got them, how many times I had played them, etc. I was bummed about this, and I felt stupid because I know what I should’ve done, but today I got an interesting view into my musical listening habits because of that mistake. (Technically, I could’ve seen this fact without the erasure, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.)

According to iTunes, I currently own 3575 things that one could consider “songs”. This excludes podcasts, voice memos, and other audio that isn’t music. Also according to iTunes, I haven’t listened to 2102 of those songs since March. In other words, almost 60% of my musical library has gone unused for the last seven months. That’s pretty surprising to me. When I really sit and think about this, it makes me wonder what the point of owning those songs is if I don’t listen to them at least a couple times a year. I mean, all my music put together isn’t even 10 days of music, so you’d think I would listen to most of my library a few times a year. But apparently I’ve been leaning pretty heavily in certain directions lately. Is this my brain’s way of telling me I own too much music? Is there a point at which a person can’t really consume and enjoy more music? Have I reached that?

So for a couple weeks I’m going to go on a diet of only music I haven’t been taking in lately. I’ll let you know how it goes. Try the same, if you’re game, and I’ll meet you back here sometime soon.