Trick title. I’m talking about CD/DVD burning software.

I checked out the latest offerings from Nero and Roxio, and man are they shit. Between registry breaking uninstallation issues and just plain bloat, they’re nearly unusable. They install a suite of software to do everything from edit audio and video files to organizing your data files—and not only are there better tools out there for these things, the data organization stuff installs over the operating system in really annoying, intrusive ways. If you haven’t tried them, don’t bother. If you have, you’re going to need various uninstallation tools to clean up after them (let me know in comments and I’ll point you to a few links I found).

The good news is, I found something that works. If burning a CD with the other software suites is like trying to drive a nail with a tool box, this software—Cheetah Burner—is like driving a nail with a hammer. It does exactly what you want it to do: burn CDs or DVDs, and without all the annoying overhead. This software doesn’t want to manage your MP3 collection, replace your DVD player, or be your best friend. It just wants to burn DVDs and CDs.

It looks to be a pretty small operation, which might be the secret to its success. Roxio and Nero’s software screams “features designed by committee.” It’s kind of amazing how poor these software packages are, considering they used to be the bottom line in media burning. So much so, in fact, that it’s difficult to find information about effective alternatives.

You definitely get the impression Roxio and Nero are packing on new “capabilities” to justify new version numbers and upgrade charges. Cheetah’s definitely a pleasant surprise: streamlined, straightforward, and simple.

Get some.

It’s almost as fast to download a song as it is to find it in my (pretty fucking big) music collection—and I’m pretty convinced it’s actually better to download than to find the local copy. I’m not quite convinced it’s better to download than it is to store—the internet does occasionally still go away for brief periods, and if I want to hear Joy Division’s first album right now to make me feel better about being offline (after all, it was 1983 when I first heard it, and the internet slumbered somewhere deep inside Defense Department hardware, waiting to be born), I’d be out of luck (unless I somehow found the unlabeled black cassette recording of this album I probably still own, somewhere). But as these things become more and more reliable (and uninterruptible power and always-on omnipresent wireless broadband are on the horizon of ubiquity), I can easily see a day where I’ve got a comparatively tiny hard drive and when I want to hear something, even something as rare as say Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first release (thirty-three copies on cassette!) I’ll just open a window and pull it out of the net. I said better, too, right? Behold:

I know I have Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” somewhere on my primary hard drive, but I don’t feel like looking for it (I’m still “unpacking” after my move from my old computer—it’s getting to be as protracted a process as if I had actually moved house, and I can easily foresee myself “living out of boxes” for some time yet). So I turn to my usual source for music I don’t yet own, and start searching for Freebird. Within thirty seconds, I’ve got the album version of Freebird downloading, a live version ostensibly from a bootleg recording (you never know with this shit until you download it and listen to it—I’ve seen stuff so mislabeled and fucked up that it makes all the “wikipedia is unreliable” arguments sing and dance in my imagination (same issue: ignorant sources substituting bad guesses or malicious erronity (!!) as definitive data)), another track called “David Cross — Freebird.mp3″ and a cover version (again, pending download, probably a cover version) of Freebird by Cat Power. I think the David Cross thing is a cut from one of his comedy albums. I’ll probably listen to it (again? I vaguely remember it) and discard it. But the Cat Power thing could be awesome. It could be my new favorite version of this song … and if I hadn’t been lazy and misplaced the copy of Skynyrd’s “Freebird” that I already have, I never would have found it.

Music piracy (uh if that was in fact what I was doing instead of uh legally purchasing copies of everything I’ve just mentioned through whatever website(s) you use for that) is an incredibly democratizing and liberating force, if you extend it in its natural directions (I have a huge library of books I’ve downloaded—and the bulk of the ebook material available through peer-to-peer networks is made up of instructional manuals).

I’m profoundly ambivalent about it, and I’m sure the dichotomy doesn’t escape those who regularly read this thing. I’m paranoid enough about my (shitty first draft) writing being ripped off that I hide it behind layers of passworded bullshit, but when I want to feed on the lifework of any recording artist, writer, film production crew, etc., past, present or future, I expect to be able to swing a machete overhead, cut a vine, and suck like an explorer in a Tarzan movie.

I’m not sure if there are any conclusions to be drawn. I’m just rambling. I sometimes try to imagine a world without currency or mortgages or rent, where musicians and writers and trash men and doctors and maybe lawyers (but I’m not so sure about lawyers) do their jobs without pay, and somehow still have nice houses, nice cars, excellent healthcare and opportunity for education and fulfillment … but I can’t make it work in my imagination. So even though it’s rewarding and enlightening for me to sit here and rip off recording artists (assuming, of course, that that is in fact what I was doing and not lawfully blah blah blah), it’s still (probably) immoral and wrong. Oh, and illegal.

But it’s so fucking cool.

We’re “new” car shopping. New being 2003-2005, car being (until yesterday afternoon) the Honda CR-V, which has won all kinds of consumer confidence blah blah blah and tested good or excellent in all the important safety blah blah blah. We’re doing this because my fourteen year old car appears to have no air conditioning, which is new since last summer. We just put about six bills into fixing the exhaust system over the winter, and the timing belt (among other things) is overdue for replacement, so we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. Which is sad, because I’ve had this car for a long time and it’s been a great ride. I get too attached to non-sentient objects. I get too attached to everything.

We went to a dealer yesterday, and I eagerly climbed into the CR-V to test the size … and discovered the driver’s-side foot-well is about six inches too short on the left side. I’d have to hold my left leg in cramp-inducing positions to sit in the seat of any length of time. Honestly, the entire cockpit area was a bit more snug than I would have liked—if I can’t extend my arms straight forward without touching windshield, I get a little claustrophobic. Major bummer: I’d had my heart set on this thing because of it’s safety and reliability records. Ok, I thought, we’ll try the Honda Odyssey, the CR-V of minivans …

The driver’s-side door control console pushes in about four inches too much, pressing uncomfortably against my left thigh. Deal killer, considering I’ll probably need to spend more than an hour, straight, in these cars on a regular basis (both for basic driving—traffic in the DC area isn’t getting anything but worse—and for longer trips, which is part of the point of buying a new car.)

Toyota Sienna? Just too fucking small in general. They had some Land Rover model which I didn’t even bother with, both because they get horrible fuel economy and because they’re overpriced. At that point, the lackadaisical salesman had sort of wandered off, so we decided to call it a day and head home.

The impetus for this sudden urge for new wheels isn’t just the air conditioning failure. I had limped my old car along through most of a shitty summer with no AC. It’s what we need to use the car for, in the summer, that’s prodding us to get it done now, before the weather hits the high 70s. We’re going to have a lot of things we need to attend this summer dressed in Grown Up Clothes, and we can’t show up sweating in our fancy dress. Not exactly the impression one wishes to bestow on an unexpecting public. “Sup? I’m Sweaty Suit Guy! Grasp my damp palm, friend!”

Along those lines, I’m buying Grown Up Shoes. I can’t show up for these things in scuffed black boots (I’ve been told). So the Carolina 939s are relegated to the closet for a bit. In the cursory shoe shopping I’ve done over the past month or so in preparation for this, I’ve found that very few places have shoes, especially dress shoes, in my size. I’ve confirmed that today, discovering that if I want to wear 1996-style dress shoes, black converse, or these ugly athletic shoes (they look like a wasp fucked a radial tire and had an ugly baby), I’m in luck. If I want to look like a business owner, I’m going to have to search harder.

I’m going to go cry giant tears and drown you all, now.

Haven’t forgotten about the blog. Just haven’t been motivated to write. See, the things I’m moved to write about I feel are either boring or depressing. Either way, I figure no one wants to read them.

I’m beginning to find the blog process somewhat embarassing, I guess.

I am getting lots of spam in the comments, though.