They all get in a line and do a dance called the Nonagon

[vovat]

I had a dream where last night where I was attending some event, and instead of it being down on a stage, it was up above the balcony, so we all had to sit in the balcony facing upwards. I think the event itself was some political thing, which is becoming somewhat of a recurring theme in my dreams nowadays.

Speaking of political events, I didn't watch all of Bush's final State of the Union address last night, but from what I saw, it looks like he's sticking with the classics. Those evil people hate us for our freedom! Come on, even Pat Buchanan essentially said that was bunk, and when your attitude is more prejudicial than Pat Buchanan's, you KNOW something's wrong. I also saw a clip of Bush's buddy in believing that terrorists hate freedom, Rudy Giuliani, talking about how we have to be on the offensive in the war on terror. I really hope that guy's strategy of concentrating entirely on Florida doesn't pay off. I wonder if it's a bad sign for him that Firefox's spell check still doesn't recognize his name.

I've been talking a lot about politics and religion as of late, haven't I? I'm now going to change the topic to They Might Be Giants. I'd say that's a less controversial subject, but considering some of the flame wars I've seen on various online forums dedicated to the band, I'm not so sure. Anyway, there's a new regular podcast out (not to be confused with the children's video podcasts that they've been doing for the past few weeks). It's mostly songs from The Else and previews of Here Comes the 1-2-3's, which is coming out in February. "Nonagon" might be my favorite of the songs I've heard from that release, although maybe that's just because of the title. (By the way, Firefox? Your spellcheck not recognizing "Giuliani" was kind of funny, but it makes no sense that you wouldn't recognize "nonagon." And why am I addressing a program as if it's a person? I don't know!) There's also a repeat of "Turtle Songs Of North America," which I can't say I understand. Wouldn't it make more sense just to direct people back to the older podcasts, rather than repeating material? The Johns seem to like latching on to new ideas--websites, streaming radio stations, street teams, podcasts, themed projects, etc.--and then not sticking with them for very long. I guess they're really kind of like me in that respect, actually. {g} Dial-A-Song is no longer around either, and while I rarely called it anyway, it was nice to know that it was there, always a constant in the world of TMBG. The impression I get is that it got too difficult for them to keep getting new phone machines only to have them malfunction shortly afterwards, but it's still quite disappointing. O John, why have you forsaken me? Is it because I'm one thousand years old? The podcasts do occasionally include some of the previews and weird stuff you could get on DAS (the most recent podcast's song about invisible people on stage looking for a trapdoor, for instance), but it's not really the same.

I think bethje will be happy with this quiz result:

Which Character From The Office Are You?

Created by BuddyTV

And finally, happy birthday to onib!

Comments

[onib.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much.

I've wondered about the repeats in the podcasts too. Isn't this the 3rd time Turtle Songs has shown up? I'm just astounded that with a forum to release any amount of half-finished tracks or unreleased oldies, they do so many repeats. Oh, well. Their ways are strange and wonderous.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much.

You're quite welcome.

Yeah, I do think it's the third time "Turtle Songs" has appeared in a podcast. I seem to recall seeing somewhere that they weren't keeping the old ones, so I guess they could be reusing the old songs because new subscribers wouldn't be able to hear them otherwise, but I really don't know. I have to wonder why, if they like "Turtle Songs" so much, they didn't include it on Cast Your Pod to the Wind.

I miss all the good stuff

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

considering some of the flame wars I've seen on various online forums dedicated to the band

Where? That sounds fun!

Re: I miss all the good stuff

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating somewhat, but I'm been witness to some pretty big arguments. The most recent one was on the tmbg community, where that one guy was banned for his repeated obnoxious posts. Other significant fights I can recall during my time as a TMBG fan include:

• A few months after I joined the alt.music.tmbg newsgroup, there was a fourteen-year-old girl who joined and made a whole bunch of pointless one-sentence posts. She didn't really bother me that much, but some other members got really pissed at her, and that led to some heated tempers.
  
• Speaking of annoying people, there was one guy who bugged a lot of people, and then made a post supposedly from his wife (even though he was actually only, like, 16 at the time) saying that he'd committed suicide. He then tried to claim it was an experiment or something.
  
• The now-defunct tmbg.org e-mail list, and to a lesser extent the newsgroup, had ongoing battles over whether it was okay for people to make off-topic posts. One of the biggest adherents to the on-topic-only point of view was a guy who actually complained on September 11th that people were talking about terrorist attacks instead of TMBG. In 1999, one list member tried to help alleviate the problem by creating a separate list for off-topic posts. bethje, 3x1minus1, colleenanne, daveychu, eagledna, listenesmerelda, mikeleffel, and themall were all members of the off-topic list at one point. I sometimes miss the camaraderie of that list.
  
• Most of this was from before I became a fan, but there were occasional mentions on the tmbg.org list of flame wars over whether 2:1 tape trading is acceptable.
  
• I think it was 1999 that there were a lot of complaints about how TMBG didn't change their setlist enough, and a fair amount of arguing resulted from that. I was actually thinking about this topic recently, and decided that the problem isn't actually that TMBG never changes their setlist (in which case people who were bored of it could just stop going to concerts), but that they'll occasionally slip a rare gem into a set. That results in long-time fans sitting through the same basic show over and over again, because there's a chance that they'll work in "Absolutely Bill's Mood" with no warning.
  

[colbyucb.livejournal.com]

I definitely appreciate the podcasts and love that I can hear all the same sorts of weird things you'd get on DAS but in much higher quality and easily archivable, but I do miss DAS. It seemed a lot more personal, I mean you had to get through the busy signals to hear whatever new strangeness they had thrown on the machine.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, whenever you called DAS, you knew you were the only one listening to the song at that particular time. That was kind of cool.

[onesto-hotel.livejournal.com]

I love how they've just abandoned Dial-a-Song and still get asked about it in EVERY interview as if it's still running. I was fortunate enough to have gotten through during its brief return in early 2006 to hear "We Live In A Dump" on DAS. It was great. I really wish it hadn't been abandoned, but oh well. So it goes...

The podcasts started out really great and crazy, but they seem to be full of a lot of repeat material as of late. (despite the fact that it's been months since they did one). As much as I tried to resist it though, the kids' podcasts are fun. Puppet Johns are hilarious.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I love how they've just abandoned Dial-a-Song and still get asked about it in EVERY interview as if it's still running.

Well, when you promote something heavily for twenty years and then suddenly abandon it with no real warning, I can understand why a lot of people would ask about it. Maybe the interviewers think it's like those stupid Burger King commercials where they claim to have discontinued the Whopper.

I get the feeling that the Johns have kind of lost interest in the podcasts, and just put one out occasionally so people don't forget they exist. I'd really prefer it if they just waited until they had a fair amount of material before releasing new ones.

Puppet Johns are hilarious.

Everybody has to learn their ABC's. Except Flans.