I'm drowning in MP3s. And I'm not even actively filesharing. The main culprit is my three month emusic subscription. At this point I think I've successfully drained emusic of 98% of the mp3s that I'm remotely interested in, with just a few new releases or merit trickling in every couple of weeks or so. But this still means I've got 8+ gigs of mp3s weighing down my hard drive. On top of that I've recently gotten into the binary newsgroups, like, alt.binaries.mp3.complete-albums, or .bootlegs or .heavy-metal. Damn, there's some fine and hard to find stuff that gets posted. I flirted with binaries newsgroups years ago, but found the whole unencoding and downloading process too labor-intensive to be worth it. But now there's all sorts of fun automated software that means any chimp can download mp3s easily, and I'm not just any chimp. So chalk up another 7+ gigs from this little excursion.

So, I can let these mp3s just sit there and play at me randomly for days -- like I've been doing -- or slowly archive them onto CD-Rs, which I've been trying to do, but it doesn't hold my interest for long. Or I could just buy another hard drive and dedicate the current one to mp3s.

Yes, life is full of tough decisions. At least mp3s take up much less space than LPs.

It's been a good week for live music. Last night I saw the Hellacopters and the Gaza Strippers -- some damn fine straight-ahead rock. It's especially curious why it takes Sweden -- home of the Hellacopters -- to so well channel the spirit of rock. Now if only Entombed -- the former death metal band, of which the Hellacopter's founder-vocalist is an alumnus -- would only tour through Champaign, life would be complete. And last Wednesday I saw Clem Snide, which was also a fun show, but at a completely different tempo and tenor. Whereas the Hellacopters are certainly just a tad ironic in their interpretation of the hard rock tradition, Clem Snide is fully ironic in their lyrical americana. Shoot me, but I got turned on to the Snide by seeing the lead-singer/songwriter open up for Ben Folds at a U of I show last Fall. I guess I'm out of the loop, but it seems like the band has gotten popular, since the club was packed -- before 10:00 -- full of college kids younger than the typical Highdive crowd. Feeling very old didn't negatively impact the experience.

I was going to see Champaign super-indie-rockers Poster Children play last Friday at the IMC, but I was exhausted from several nights of irregular sleep. Yes, I am old and lame, I chose sleep over rock.

This is no revelation, but college sports fans frequently are morons. And you know these are the same hypocrites who complain and demand law and order when people with legitimate complaints take to the streets in protest.