The wonderful Level Four package for Jonathan Coulton’s new album Artificial Heart included MP3s of the master tracks broken up into individual files, so I have assembled each of the songs into an instrumental version (minus lead and background vocals) for my own amusement and figured others might be interested as well.


Download Artificial Heart Instrumentals

Please note:

  • This album is attributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (except “Still Alive” which belongs to Valve and I guess I am stealing)
  • This album does not include “Nobody Loves You Like Me” and “Want You Gone”, as the former is mostly an acapella with a small unrecognizable bass line, and the latter was not included in the files released. You can find fan-made instrumentals of “Want You Gone” online elsewhere
  • These tracks are usable for karaoke, but you might want to mix in the background vocals as well for the real effect

Now to pretend to be Girl Talk and mix the acapella vocals into hip-hop.

Since I know in our modern world overrun with twitter and whatever, nobody wants to read essays anymore. We want lists! So here you go, some favorites and some lists. For comparison, here is last year’s.

Favorite Music
Favorite Live Shows

Favorite non-music live show: John Hodgman’s THAT IS ALL Book Tour, Portland and Seattle

Favorite Movie: Bridesmaids
Favorite Movie not released this year: Easy A

Favorite Books:
1. THAT IS ALL by John Hodgman
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and other concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Favorite Book not released this year: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Favorite New TV Show: Game of Thrones
Favorite Continuing TV Show: Parks and Recreation
Favorite TV quote to repeat to myself: “so how is this going?” “not great.” from Archer

Favorite Year End List: BEST OF 2011: Late Night Lists by David Rees

Favorite Video Games:
1. Portal 2
2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
3. Battlefield 3
4. Star Wars: The Old Republic

Favorite Podcasts:
1. Roderick on the Line
2. Judge John Hodgman
3. NPR’s Planet Money

Favorite Restaurant (where I probably ate too often): Iguanas Burritozilla
Favorite Non-Bay Area Restaurant: Skillet Diner, Seattle
Favorite Sandwich: Pork Belly Cubano at Bunk’s Sandwiches, Portland
Favorite Taco Truck: BBQ Kalbi

Favorite online writer person: Sean O’Neal at The AV Club

Most Embarrassing Moment: Being publicly schooled by Questlove on twitter.

I went to a lot of live concerts this year, more than any other year I have been alive, and many of them were mind-blowing (while the rest were just merely awesome). Here are some thoughts on my favorites:

- The Decemberists at The Fox Oakland, February 14th
I wrote about this concert here.

- LCD Soundsystem at Terminal 5, March 31st
This was the last of LCD’s run at Terminal 5 before their final show at Madison Square Garden, and it was my favorite of the three I saw there. I had a much better spot at this show, even though I was near the back of the floor crowd and I thought they really just fucking laid it all out on the table. When they were playing “Yeah” or “Time to Get Away” and the synths were blaring I just could not imagine wanting to be anywhere else at that moment. It also really ignited my interest in making music, I wanted to be up there playing music like this as loud as possible. It was the highlight of a week that had nothing but good shows from one of my favorite bands.

- Robyn at Coachella, April 15th
- The Joy Formidable at Coachella, April 16th
- Mumford and Sons at Coachella, April 16

I wrote about my Coachella experiences here.

- The Mountain Goats at The Fillmore, June 20th
Probably tied with the LCD Terminal 5 show for my favorite of the year (although I think that was a special case, so advantage Mountain Goats). I saw the Mountain Goats in 2009 with Jason but at the time I was not very familiar with their stuff. It was an amazing show and I came home and bought every single album. I studied up and so this time when they played This Year, No Children and The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton I knew all the words. The band, and John Darnielle in particular, seem to love playing SF and always put on an incredible show and this one was no slouch. Just unbelievable. Since the Decemberists have closed up shop for a while, I think The Mountain Goats are definitely my number one recommended band to see live.

- Titus Andronicus at The Fox Oakland, June 22nd
I wrote about my obsession with Titus Andronicus, and this show, here.

- Cibo Matto at Bimbos 365, June 25th
After being obsessed with Cibo Matto ten years ago, it was unreal getting to see them live. It was super fun.

- Arcade Fire at Outside Lands Festival, August 14th
I briefly wrote the following about seeing Arcade Fire at Outside Lands:
Tonight during Arcade Fire’s set I started crying, once at the beginning of the set during Keep the Car Running and again at the end during Wake Up. It was wonderful.

- Supercommuter at The Paramount Theatre, August 28th
Supercommuter played last in a pretty awesome lineup on Saturday at PAX. By the time they got on I was really tired and ready to pack it up, but I wanted to stick around for at least one song. As soon as they started though, I could tell I was in it for the long haul as their music sounded AMAZING as loud as possible at the Paramount (a pretty large venue with huge repeaters). I loved Optimus Rhyme and so it was a very pleasant surprise to find that Wheelie Cyberman had ended up in a new band, and I love both Supercommuter albums to death. I started their set feeing extremely tired and ended it feeling pumped full of energy.

- St. Vincent at Treasure Island Music Festival, October 16th
I had listened to St. Vincent before but this was the first time I saw her live. She just attacks the guitar with an intensity I thought reserved only for Metal and wangy guitar rock, but at the same time writing these absolutely gorgeous songs. A bonus was that same night I ran across town to see Thao and the Get Down Stay Down at the Independent, Thao Ngyuen being another incredibly talented female guitarist. It was a very good day for that

- Paul and Storm at Cafe Du Nord, November 30th
Not many people came to this show, maybe thirty-five total, but I think we tried our best to make it up to Paul & Storm with our enthusiasm. Also the panties I threw on stage got picked for the line in “Opening Band” even if I did go extra creepy with them.

2011 was hands down the best year of my life. Here are some highlights:

EDIT: I forgot something awesome that happened in January that I am including below.

In January I got tickets to The Wright Stuff, a screening of all three Edgar Wright movies (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) which was attended by Wright, Simon Pegg, Lucy Davis, and a number of the Scott Pilgrim cast. Jason and I drove down to Los Angeles on a Saturday afternoon and went to the screening, which was super fun. Being 10 feet away from Edgar and Simon felt unreal.

In March I went to New York for about a week to see the final LCD Soundsystem shows. I had a wonderful time and fell in love with the city. I spent a large portion of the year plotting to move there, which has since cooled but I think about it from time to time.

In April I went to Coachella for the first time. It was an amazing experience and I saw an unbelievable amount of live music in three days. I repeated that experience again in August when I went to Outside Lands Festival here in SF and then Treasure Island Music Festival in October. I still want to do a separate post on shows from this past year so I will leave it at that for now.

California Extreme happened in July and included an awesome chip tunes/video game cover concert. It had been a couple years since I had gone last but I am very happy I went back.

In August I went to PAX for the second time. I finally got to meet Eden and Zannah for the first time! I also met a bunch of Seamonkeys who I got to know on Twitter after signing up to go on JoCoCruiseCrazy this coming February which was awesome.

October saw the release of books by my two favorite authors, Haruki Murakami and John Hodgman, within a week of each other which seemed like a cosmic gift of some kind. Both books were amazing.

In addition Hodgman went on tour in November but was not coming to the Bay Area (but he is very soon!) so I took it upon myself to go to see him in both Portland and Seattle because I am crazy obsessed. While in Portland I got to hang out with Maria and Taylor and then in Seattle I spent an evening with Sara, all of whom I met at PAX for the first time as well.

I would be remiss to not mention that Vic moved here over the summer with her husband, and has led to much hanging out with them and Mattie. And most importantly I have wrangled them into a band with me, which is crazy awesome.

This year I was able to get back into reading. I read 19 books, not a lot but certainly more than I was reading in past years. Part of this was fueled by buying a Kindle in February before I went to New York, as the convenience of having it lead to a lot more reading while out of town all year. At the same time I just devoted more time to books instead of manga or video games.

When I think about my life as it was a year ago, and I can very clearly remember how I felt about things then, it amazes me that things have come so far so quickly. I can only hope that things will continue to improve or even just maintain my current level of satisfaction with my life.

I think I am on the right track though, I have a lot of plans for this year already which should help. In January there are a number of awesome shows part of SF Sketchfest, then in February is JoCoCruiseCrazy which I am unreasonably excited for. After that is PAX East in April and Coachella the very next two weeks, and finally MaxFunCon in June. So I am going to be very busy.

(Note: I am not being paid to write this and these are not Amazon referral links, I just want to share music I like with people.)

I can recommend the following:

A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio (aka the only Christmas album you need to own)
I Will Be by Dum Dum Girls
Lungs by Florence + The Machine
Civilian by Wye Oak
How I Got Over by The Roots
Volume Two by She & Him
Artificial Heart by Jonathan Coulton
I Told You I Was Freaky by Flight of the Conchords
The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths
Odelay by Beck
Room for Squares by John Mayer (Note: I know he is a complete juicebox and the two radio singles from this album were overplayed, but there are a ton of songs on here that I listened to non-stop in college so I would feel remiss to leave it off.)
Kid A – Radiohead
Of the Blue Color of the Sky by OK Go
Feels Like Home by Norah Jones
The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails
Green by R.E.M.

I am going to listen to the following on Spotify and possibly buy:
Little Voice by Sara Bareilles
The Book of Mormon by the Original Broadway Cast

Since it is that time of year, I might as well put up a list. Let it be known I feel browbeaten into it. If you do not feel like reading my dumb list, I also made a Spotify playlist you can get here.

Favorite Albums of 2011 (in no particular order):
The Decemberists – The King is Dead
Florence + The Machine – Ceremonials
Dum Dum Girls – He Gets Me High/Only In Dreams
Cults – Cults
The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar
The Mountain Goats – All Eternal’s Deck
Vivian Girls – Share The Joy
Awkward Terrible – I Feel Asleep
Jonathan Coulton – Artificial Heart
MC Frontalot – Solved
Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
Supercommuter – Products of Science

These three albums I loved, but only about half of the album for each:
St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
Beirut – The Rip Tide
Wild Flag – Wild Flag

My favorite individual songs of the year (again in no particular order) were:
St. Vincent – Surgeon
The Decemberists – Calamity Song
Vivian Girls – Take It As It Comes
Cults – Go Outside
Jonathan Coulton – Nemeses
Dum Dum Girls – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
The Joy Formidible – Cradle
Beirut – Sante Fe
Supercommuter – It is Splendid!

I also spent a large portion of the year listening to albums that did not come out this year, the main ones were:
Titus Andronicus – The Monitor (shocking, I know)
Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
The Like – Release Me

According to my Last.fm profile, the three artists I listened to the most this year were:
1. The Mountain Goats
2. Titus Andronicus
3. Robyn

I am gonna try to write a separate posts about live shows I saw this year as there were so many.

I bought a Kindle Fire at launch, not really sure why, so I figured I should write up a review.

The main point of comparison for me is the iPad 2 (32gb, wifi) that I have had since July. I also have a Kindle 3rd Gen (what they call a Kindle Keyboard now) which conveniently died on me shortly after I got the Fire, but Amazon is sending me a replacement as I write this. This has also been my first experience using an Android device, albeit a well-veiled one.

My first impression is that the device is the perfect form factor for reading at night in bed. Previously I was using the iPad for this, due to the backlit screen, but I never really enjoyed it. I think the e-ink Kindle is still the best reading experience over all but I will use (and have been using) the Fire at night.

They appear to basically be using the same app that is on the iPad for reading Kindle books. This annoys me for a few reasons:

1. The app does not display page numbers for books. On the e-ink Kindle this seems to either work or not on a per-book basis, but they never work on the iPad or Fire app, even for books that I know had page numbers on e-ink.

2. The app does not have an easy way to jump chapters. The Kindle Keyboard lets you jump to the beginning/end of the chapter (and from there the beginning of the next/previous chapter), but this does not seem to be a feature. Instead you need to go to the table of contents and hope you know which is the next chapter.

3. The e-ink Kindles allow you to categorize your books into folders but the Fire and iPad apps do not. You just get one big list of your books, which I can only imagine will be harder to manage if you have a big collection.

The main UI for the Fire is okay, though I do have an issue picking an item from the main carousel as it seems very precise how much you need to scroll to bring something to the forefront. The way they split off different types of media into categories makes sense and the cloud portion mostly works.

One thing that immediately annoyed me is that they include a bunch of pre-installed “apps”, many of which are just shortcuts to mobile web versions of popular sites. Facebook is included in these and for some inexplicable reason you cannot delete it. I do not use Facebook so deletion was my first instinct and I quickly discovered you cannot hide or get rid of it at all which I find very frustrating.

It seems like there is a limited selection of apps as you are stuck with only Amazon’s store by default. This means if I want something that Amazon does not list (example: Spotify), I have to circumvent their rules and side-load. This is basically the last thing I want to do and a large reason why I like iOS: (Apple only lets you do what they want, but what they want for a phone/tablet generally is inline with what I want [not so much with an OS but that is another post]). So no Spotify or other apps that I cannot easily download.

That said, they do include integration with their own cloud for music and video. I have been buying music from Amazon MP3 for a while now, though I had to re-upload most of it to the Amazon Cloud myself, so I have a pretty large selection.

When I first selected Cloud music there were a multitude of icons and everything seemed fine. I did notice that one album (Strange Mercy by St. Vincent) was missing, though it came up after I did a search and then later did appear when I sorted the cloud collection by Artist again. So I am not sure if it was a “catalog download in progress” issue or if more albums are not going to appear until I notice they are missing.

Having access to the Amazon prime video collection is nice (since the iPad will probably never get this), and there is also access to Netflix as well, though I have yet to find something that Amazon Prime has and Netflix does not. Maybe something will come up.

So far I am not crazy about the on-screen keyboard. I seem to be mistyping a lot, though I may still be in the adjustment period which I believe I had with the iPad as well.

The Silk browser does not really impress me at all. It seems slower than the iPad or iPhone and often times pages will not render beyond the first screen. Meaning I can see that there is more page that normally I could scroll down to see, but the browser will not let me scroll vertically.

This is also an issue inside the Amazon app on the device (not sure if this is well-veiled mobile web or what). They let you filter by categories on Amazon, but often times the category pages just do not load beyond a list of question marks. I tried to find a Fire case using the app and gave up in frustration.

I have not tried the reading experience for magazines as the free trials provided are auto-renew and I do not want to accidentally get stuck with a subscription. I did download Comixology and comics look pretty great. There is a definite contrast difference between the Fire and the iPad and I am not sure if I necessarily preferred one over the other.

In general though, I am a bit disappointed in the Fire. It is pretty decent at being a back-lit Kindle but not quite there as a fully featured tablet.

Maybe I have been spoiled by the iPad, but I think if this was your first tablet experience you might not see what the big deal is. It does reading as well as I would hope, with the caveats listed above, but everything else is okay at best (music, video) and dreadful (web browsing) at worst.

Living in northern California where there is no real winter I rarely feel Christmas spirit anymore. So as far as I am concerned there are only two acceptable Christmas songs:


The Angel Song -イヴの鐘- by The Brilliant Green

and


Linus and Lucy by Vince Guaraldi, or really the whole A Charlie Brown Christmas album is acceptable.

I have clinical depression. It comes and goes in waves, sometimes I can see it coming and other times I find myself up to the waist in it without realizing. I have been diagnosed in the past by a psychiatrist and was previously on anti-depressants which helped a great deal but had questionable side effects.

While in the midst of a bout of depression, I can almost always recognize the effect it has on my mind and body in comparison to situational depression or stress. I find this extremely troubling, my mind recognizes there is something going on but I feel as though I have no control to stop it. I have negative thoughts, I realize why I am having them and try to stop them but cannot and get frustrated at my lack of ability to control myself.

For example, here are a replay of the events of tonight:

1. I feel very down about my relationship situation.
2. I want to write a whiny post on google plus about my feeling down but stop myself.
3. I recognize that #1 and #2 are caused by depression and stop myself.
4. I want to write a sarcastic blog post on google plus about how I am stopping myself from whining.
5. I stop myself from doing so on the basis that “nobody wants to read that shit”
6. I feel even more depressed both that:
a. I considered #4 at all,
b. that other people seem to do this all the time anyway and maybe I should just allow myself to do this
c. I am over-thinking this way too much
7. I feel down about the fact that I am over-thinking this too much.

This sequence of events, where I feel down and then check myself only to feel even more down as a result, occurs five or six times every day so long as I am allowed idle thoughts. It is especially bad at night when I am at home alone (which is to say most nights). I will usually counteract this by trying to do something productive to take my mind off things or, more frequently, going to sleep regardless of what time it is.

For a few years I was on anti-depressants which lessened the frequency of these episodes. Instead of happening two or three times a month, I would only be afflicted maybe once every three months. My issue with the anti-depressants was that they eliminated both the episodes but also any a large portion of my ambition and sense of urgency to change my life situation.

For example I keep getting depressed over my relationship situation and while normally feeling this way should spur someone into action, when I am in the midst of a depression episode I just want to whine about it on the internet. When I was on the anti-depressants I just did not think about it at all, good or bad, which still seemed like an overall negative reaction to things.

Multiply this feeling of complicity across many aspects of my life and I felt at times like a deader version of my normal self. I hate to even bring it up as it probably seems like a cliche for me at this point, but the moment I fell in love with Titus Andronicus was when I realized that their song “No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future” is about antidepressants, with Patrick Stickles the singer describing the exact same experience I had while taking them.

I am not even sure why I am writing this, other than to hopefully have something moderately productive come out of my current depression episode.

Good evening, my name is Alice Lee.

For years now I have been obsessed with the work of one “John Hodgman”, who has produced a large body of work including his books, radio pieces, cameo appearances in movies and on television shows, and questionable ukulele playing. With the recent release of Hodgman’s third book, That Is All, he has embarked on a book tour across the United States; and as he is not coming to the area where I live I feel compelled to stalk him up the west coast for two days this coming weekend.

As you might imagine this is hard work, literally1 stalking an over-40 tuxedo wearing asthmatic and so I have prepared for myself a COMPACT DISC (CD) which can be used during the drive from Portland to Seattle along Interstate Five. As the drive will take approximately three hours, I will be listening to this CD literally2 twice.

I have prepared this CD in a SPECIAL INTERNET MPEG DOWNLOAD format for you should you be interested. The songs were hand-picked, by me, to coincide with either Mister Hodgman’s career and life’s work, the cities which I will be visiting (Portland and Seattle), or songs I just had stuck in my head when I was making it. The track list follows.

1. The Theme Song – Jonathan Coulton and John Hodgman
2. Good Evening – John Hodgman
3. A More Perfect Union – Titus Andronicus
4. The New Year – Death Cab For Cutie
5. Jumpers – Sleater-Kinney
6. Surgeon – St. Vincent
7. Rebel Girl – Bikini Kill
8. Scott Pilgrim – Plumtree
9. Nerd Versus Jock – MC Frontalot
10. A Prairie Musette – Black Prairie
11. Rise To Me – The Decemberists
12. Nemeses – Jonathan Coulton (feat. John Roderick)
13. Coming Down – Dum Dum Girls
14. Lithium – Nirvana
15. What Will Happen In the Future – John Hodgman
16. What Will Happen In the Future (cont.) – John Hodgman
17. What Will Happen In the Future (cont.) – John Hodgman
18. The Commander Thinks Aloud – The Long Winters

You may download the SPECIAL INTERNET MPEG DOWNLOAD here. That is all.

1 Not literally.
2 Literally.

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