Wherein we relate recent events and ruminate on music

It's been a busy few weeks, filled with 12 hours at work, 8 hours of sleep, 2 hours of travel time, and 2 hours of things I won't talk about, even on the Interweb.

Couple of strange happenings:

I work weird hours, which means I often end up walking home from work between 4 and 6 am. The subway doesn't start until six, and the only other transit option is the aptly named Vomit Comet, something I'm not willing to subject myself to, for hopefully apparent reasons.

The walk is only 15 minutes longer than taking transit in any case, if you don't factor in wait times, which at the odd hours I travel would make the trip take approximately pi hours. In any case, you can easily forget some things when living in a big city, especially how dark it is when the sun is not up. I walked through a roughly ten block area that had been afflicted by a power outage last week, and I'll be damned if it was not darker than the depths of my soul. It made for a slightly less relaxing walk than normal, but I figured that any crazies who were out and about would be given away by their pungent cologne long before I would see them under any condition.

Speaking of those who shouldn't have been released from our fine mental health facilities, in the past three weeks, I've seen the same homeless fellow a) pandering for change, b) urinating on his pants, c) wearing newspaper shoes, d) urinating on said shoes, e) trying to break into a cell phone store by flinging himself at the plate glass storefront, f) trying to urinate on his own face, g) decrying the 'Running Jog of Capitalistics' at 3:35 am in front of a Baskin Robbins, h) getting belligerent with a parking meter, i) failing (fortunately) at e and f and finally, j) making out with a manhole cover in the middle of the street.

He seems to be afraid of people, judging by the few times I've seen others near him, which is likely the only reason he hasn't been locked away. It does make me wonder how he got that way though... there but for the grace of who knows what go I.

Music (speaking of terrible segues), is a big part of my life. I listen to it constantly, and am always trying to find new music to love, and revisiting old favourites. I recently heard the Buggles 'Video Killed the Radio Star' again for the first time in a while, and it got me to thinking.

Has the music video really done irreparable harm to music as a whole? Without Much and MTV, I seriously doubt we'd be burdened with artists like Brittany 'Ooops, I'm pregnant again' Spears, and most of the other pop tartlets, plus pseudo bands like Good Charlotte. On the flip side, the music video is part of mass media, which on the whole I think has meant that there is more choice in this increasingly fragmented market space. Without mass media I don't honestly think that bands like the Dresden Dolls, Tragically Hip, BNL, Killers, White Stripes, The Cure, etc... would ever have had enough airplay to garner fans. But hey, what do I know. I'm just some asshole with a blog.

I don't listen to the radio, so it's easy for me to tune out the disposable music which is apparently so prevalent, but I'm loving being able to pick and choose certain songs, and discovering new artists all through the wonders of the Interweb.