Hitting The Medium Time

Hello again. My vacation, strangely bracketed with posts about the profoundly awesome state of the Still-Inexplicably-Microsoft-Dominant Global Software Paradigm, has come to an end. I'm sure you were all destitute without your semi-weekly postings about the philosophical implications of...uh...stuff.

Musical news has transpired during this middle time: whereas before I went on vacation there existed in the world a total of zero (0) compilations featuring songs by The Calculus Affair, there now exist not one, but in fact TWO (2) such CDs. Men Of Luggage appears on The Best Of Sound Aid, a compilation in support of Heifer International (favorite charity of The Gadfly family), which you can buy (or listen to clips, if you like to hear things first) from CDBaby by clicking here. The Man Who Used To Hunt Cougars For Bounty appears smack dab in the middle of Indiescent Exposure, a compilation of artists from the 2007 RPM challenge. In the theoretical world of our imagination, this album comes out on the Hear Music label this fall (in reality, these things are fraught with peril). In the meantime you can stream the album here (you should do this, and you should buy this CD if it ever comes out, because it is a frickin' awesome album) (and not just because it contains a song by me).

Calvino: Why should I purchase either of these CDs? I can already download these two songs for free, and I probably won't really like anything else on either of them.

The Stoat: Caché, my eponymous friend. Ignore the obvious and mundane "it's a good cause," or "you should support the independent musician blah blah blah," arguments—not that they aren't compelling, but they pale in comparison to the associated coolness you will acquire.

Calvino: What are you talking about? Have you read If on a winter's night a traveler? I am already totally cool.

The Stoat: Agreed, but consider the level of coolness you would attain by not only being the author of the greatest meta-novel in the modern literary canon but also being friends with an actual musician. We're no longer talking about just knowing some dude somewhere who records music in his basement. Other people, random people totally unknown to either of you, have taken your friend's music and deemed it, in some way and for some definition of the term, "worthy".

Calvino: But isn't it already too late? How can I differentiate myself from these unwashed masses who are, even now, flocking in to attempt to claim ownership of this associative coolness?

The Stoat: Your coolness was assured from the moment you met in high school/college/glee club/your cousin's Bat Mitzvah. These other people are relative late-comers. You already knew him in the proverbial "when." So of course you have these two compilation albums. And the album he recorded four years ago that he only gave to his close friends that the hoi polloi haven't heard of. And the mp3 demos of a couple of new songs he's working on that he emailed to you a couple of weeks ago. You're just that cool.

Calvino: AND I wrote If on a winter's night a traveler.

The Stoat: And you wrote If on a winter's night a traveler.