A new obsession

I have a new on-line obsession....Launch Radio. If you have a yahoo account you can create your own Customized radio station. You do it by picking genres and subgenres, band/artists, albums, and songs that you are into. Then they will play random songs according to your choices of genres et al. and as they paly you can rate the Artist, the album and the song on a scale from 0-5 0 meaning never play it again to love it (5). then music starts showing up according to where it ranks on you lists aswell as random stuff. So the obsession comes in finding artists and ranking them and all their stuff and making your Radio station truly yours. I have been annoying my wife greatly as everytime she turns around I am on-line editing my paly-list. I will type in a band/artist I enjoy and then rate it. Next I go to the "similar artist" file and rate some of the ones I know from there I follow the link to similar artists of those ones and on and on it goes. Then I listen to some artists I have heard about but have never heard. and then the cycle starts all over again.
Then there is this little thing called "moods" where you can have playlists that are done according to the moods you are in (once again you create the "mood" and what genres et al are included). But this is part of the pay portion of Launch cast so sucks to that. Vive le Free!!!!

I have been doing this radio thing for days now, I even put off doing any blogging and had to do this in two parts because of it. I can't seem to e-mail anyone (and man I have to do that) but I sure can rate the hell out of my radio station. All this has brought to mind an idea that has been rolling around now for a couple months, it would be a way for me to put my obsession with music to good use...start a label. I know absolutely nothing about the way it would work or how we would be different from anyone elese out there but hey gimme some time to figure it all out and this too will be able to be added to the list of really good deas that I have no time/money to work on. Oh well I am young and it could still happen blah blah blah...actually somewhere deep inside I believe that those words are true but the cynicism that often plagues those my age just won't let me hope. I so dislike how cynical I have become. (Remind me to share some of my thoughts on cynicism vs. irony al a Douglas Coupland).

sorry about that little tangent but sometimes a mood just hits ya know?

while I have been writing this I have gone to maketradefair.org and searched the site and have been reminded how much navel-gazing I do and how little thought I give to the oppressed around the world and how I can help them. I also watched The Hour and was deeply saddened to hear of a two year old that was shot by those who took many children hostage from a school in Cambodia because he was crying too much during the hostage taking. Like what the eff!!!!! The boy was TWO!!!!!! killing, violence, war and the like bother me enough but when it involves children it goes beyond upsetting. Children should never have to deal with any of this stuff. Not here in Canada or the US or "over there" in any part of the world. I grow weary of seeing children being made to pay for the "sins of their fathers". I grow antsy for the time when the Kingdom of God will rule on earth as it does in Heaven and there will be peace. Having spent the better part of two years working with children in some shitty situations and seeing their innocence attacked and violated but also seeing that same innocence still trying to hang on I know that as a follower of Christ I am honor and duty bound to help those children and woe unto me if I don't. That children are made to be our examples compells us to act in an attempt to create a world where children are allowed to live freely and simply as children, not as slaves to fear and hate and greed.

Wow sorry again for hijacking my own light hearted blog entry but this is and other related topics just can't be ignored and are imoprtant to me and as such will appear many more times in the future....but I promise that I will try to give better warning, I will try to not to do too many stream-of-conciousness-like rants and I will always mix it up with many topics from the inane to the serious, from the dry to the witty....I won't depress you all the time.


Ps be on the look out for a new heading in my links "social Activism" where I will have as it states sites, blogs, etc. whose focus is on "Social Activism"