Perfect Songs

Last year I did a bunch of monthly blog posts choosing five favourite songs I'd been listening to each month, and it was a lot of fun to catalogue songs in that way and sort of define a month in loved sounds. I'm not planning to do that again at the moment, but I do just feel like doing something similar and listing some songs that are swirling around like bright and rushing blood in my head right now. So here are some songs that I really, really love at this moment.

1. Joan - All The Way

This is a true synthpop bop that came up on an autogenerated Spotify playlist for me (of course). Spotify just wants to feed me so much of this stuff and it is incredible. It's so bouncy, has fun little "Go West" style jingly guitar parts peeking around the corner of the song like me peeking into my autogenerated Spotify playlists at 1am and winking. It's really good, thanks.

2. The Good Natured - Lovers

This is one of those hidden little bands that seem to have slipped through a bunch of cracks and live underneath the grates with their amazing songs that you can see hidden down there. Lurking. Every time I remember their existence it blows my mind again. They're incredibly good at choruses, and have a very catchy sort of pop structure throughout a lot of their material that's blended really nicely with some fun, dark lyrics and a great sort of "thrown at the wall" indie style sound. This song will not leave my head and I like the home footage style music video. And I love singer Sarah's hair and penchant for shorts with tights. Style icon and legend.

3. Vampire Weekend - Harmony Hall

Vampire Weekend are a band that I never really listened to until very recently. I think I heard an early single and just didn't find it that compelling at the time, and that combined with their apparent ubiquity just kinda pushed me away from ever paying them much attention. But eventually when I finally sat down and paid attention to their albums I realised that I love them. I guess sometimes it takes sitting down and actually taking the time to listen to the sounds and words of a song or an album to connect with it in that big, warm way that feels so good. So I'm glad I did that, just sat down and listened to an album of theirs without really doing anything else. Because I finally got that gleeful feeling of hearing a weird, funny lyric for the first time and being like, "wow, okay."

Anyway, Harmony Hall/2021 was released in January of this year, and it's beautiful. They've mastered these really gentle, lilting swells. That same kind of calm, soaring release that I love about a lot of Cat Stevens songs. Such a very alive and dreamy feeling. I love Vampire Weekend. I love. Them.

4. Dolly Parton - Marry Me

I'm putting this here because it's cute and great in general, but the thing that really sells it is the laugh Dolly does at the end, which has rejunivated me and extended my life. I'm an immortal now, thanks to Dolly Parton.

Songs. They're good, aren't they?

The Death of a Scanner

Oh look, it's my face. After a good seven years of scanning my face, my scanner has finally given up on life, so these will be the last scans made with a Canon Pixma MP270. Goodbye, sweet prince.

What a great scanner it was. Well, it's time for a new one. I don't know yet if the new scans I make will be noticeably different at all, but it's kinda strange to think that suddenly there's a transition. In the whole time I've being doing this it's been constant. One scanner, and one face that doesn't seem much different from when I started.

I'm excited to try the new scanner though. It's a Canon Pixma MG2550S. Very exciting.

The longer my hair gets, the more of an obstacle it becomes for the scanner, but I suppose the most interesting part of these scans over time, it could be argued, is the hair, since it's the thing that most clearly changes. I remember having really short hair in some of my earliest scans, and I feel like there's a particular youthfulness to that... although of course I was younger. But maybe I'll never have hair that short again.

Strange to thing of these ways I was different, and how they're captured this way, maybe invisibly (in the sense that there are kind of visual reminders I can pinpoint that I don't think would signify anything to anyone else)

Anyway here I am, still.

Googbye: The End of Google+

I've heard a sick rumour that my best friend Google+ is being deleted, and I'm here to tell you that Google+ will never die. In my heart.

I have been enjoying Google+. It's actually the best social media option, and you are all fools and cowards for believing otherwise.

Twitter is cancelled. Google+ is the way forward. These people agree:

Dissenters shall be punished.

Google+ is good. Please don't leave me, Google+. I need you.

One day we are all going to wake up in a cold sweat in the dead of night, knowing all of a sudden that we were wrong to forsake Google+. Knowing that the confusing nature of joining circles on Google+ was simply our own terrible flaw. Because Google+ is good, and we've taken it for granted. And for that, we can never forgive ourselves.

Please. Hang your head in shame. How could you? How could you neglect Google+ like this? It just wanted to make you happy. It just wanted to link your Gmail account with an ever-increasing cascade of new Google+ accounts popping up like new nameless pustules of online identity, splintering off like a tough orange segment that stays attached to all the pith but tears at the centre of its flesh. It just wanted to give you another Google+ page, and then another, and then another, to show you it cared. To show you it loved you.

But you never appreciated it. You never cared for its segmented and shuffling kindnesses. It never had your attention. You killed it. You pulled it apart like a wild dog, torn +1's pouring from your mouth.

Are you happy?

Are you happy now?

Don't forget...

Google+ died for our sins.