Magic Jewball

Back when Baby Owen was born (on my birthday! I may have mentioned this a couple or eighty times) I had a tough time deciding what to get him and looked in several states and a couple of countries. But finally, the perfect gift emerged, I can’t even remember how, and I got him one of a series of CD’s of rock and alternative artists done in lullaby form. Baby Owen got Radiohead because that’s what his Mom likes, but ever since then, I’ve been mesmerized by them and just could never decide what to get. They all have fantastic covers, too, something like the artwork of the original artist but in kiddie style.

(l-r: The Cure, U2, Bob Marley, Metallica)

Cool, right? There are a bunch I really like but I finally chose Tool and made it my inaugural song purchase from the Amazon music store. Only 89 cents! Anyway, this song is just fabulous because it keeps all of the dark, haunting hypnotism of the original but with a softer arrangement and fewer swear words. They accomplished that last part by making it instrumental. But it’s OK, babies pretty much already know that shit ends up at the bottom and you should wear your grudge like a crown of negativity.

Napster:
Tool Lullabies – Reflection

Streaming audio available on the iPod Song of the Week page.

I have a new BlackBerry! And so does my friend, Alfa, who complained that my site doesn’t render correctly on hers. I thought maybe it was the new BlackBerries because mine has always shown this site fine, if a little skewed and nekkid-looking with black text on stark white background, bright blue links, and no pictures. Ugly but serviceable. But Alfa told me that hers looked like my actual site, only impossible to read. So when I got my new one I had a look-see but it still looked OK to me. That’s when I realized that hers must be set to show all the background images of this site which are numerous and designed for a screen much wider than a smartphone’s. When you do that, all the containers break and you can’t read anything.

Since I can’t force everyone to change the settings of their BlackBerries and Treos and Motos or whatever you have to the graphics-less option, I have a new theme (at left, for you deprived Razr people) set up just for mobile browsers. It detects that you’re on a smartphone, circumvents all that container-breaking, strips off my site’s bling, and just shows you the posts and pages, all in a text-based, easy-to-read manner. Phew. Now you know what to do while you’re stuck in that boring-ass meeting.

If you see the black-backgrounded, flowery theme, there should be a link to get the mobile version. Be sure to tell me if your results vary! I only tested this on two browsers and I’m told there are 480 others. Because your brain screen is little, only excerpts appear on the main page in the mobile version. That way, you can just click on the header of the post you want to read. In unrelated news, the first paragraph of each post will now be far more scintillating than the rest of the essay.

And this is the new BlackBerry. It plays music and takes pictures and has sharp graphics and is small and cute and more phone-like than before. And it works with WiFi! Plus, it cost half what a mePhone does and has a real keyboard and the fun, fun e-mail program I have grown to know and love. Word to Alfa and everyone: use OperaMini, it rocks and, although it’s hard to tell from the blurry snap above, even stripped-down J-Ball looks like minimalist art in it. And my favicon shows up, which it doesn’t on the regular BlackBerry browser, and you all know how important that is to me. This is because I’m insane.

Bonus music today will be the ringtone I made for my new BlackBerry which, yes finally, will be my only phone. Enjoy the irony!

(click to play)

The Who – Going Mobile