iTunes? More like cryTunes

Pull up a seat, make yourselves comfortable, and I will tell you a tale. A classic tale that will echo throughout the ages, an emotional roller coaster of frustration, rage, anger, irritation, aggravation, grief, longing, and buttmad.

This isn't your average, everyday joke reuse. This is... ADVANCED joke reuse.

I guess you could say that this story began in the year 1711, on a lonesome ship in the middle of a stormy sea, where a group of alchemists attempted to summon a devil to aid their quest for the grand panacea, an elixir granting immortality to any who imbibe it. Surprisingly enough, the ritual worked, and all aboard the vessel were granted everlasting life, only to be cut short by the hand of another immortal. But that's enough of my backstory. It could be said that my troubles began a few years ago, the moment my brother won a free iPad in a raffle, but refused his friend's offer to give him $200 to smash it against the ground then and there. This resulted in the unfortunate affliction of owning an iPad, and a yet more severe case of having to deal with iTunes. But little did I know, all those frustrations were but a prelude to the fugue that was to follow.

A few months ago, I saw an update on Serebii that said that the soundtrack for Pokemon X and Y (That's right. It's another one of those posts) would be sold on iTunes. Gamefreak had finally called me out on my bluff that I would legally pay for and download video game music if only I was given the chance. And I was glad they did. Gamefreak, and video game makers (Developers? Producers? Birthers?) in general make some pretty spectacular music, and they deserve to be recognized for it, monetarily. Sure, it meant that I would now have to actually pay for the music, and opportunities to become poorer usually aren't something that I celebrate, but as long as the money was going to a good cause, it would be worth it, because it would allow me to fit way too many commas in one sentence, wouldn't it?

And then, on November 12^th, a month after the game was released, the full soundtrack was released on iTunes, an impressive 212 songs for a meager $10. Deals don't get much better than that, right? I mean, sure a lot of the “songs” are probably just short jingles and sound effects, but even if as much as half of them were proper songs, it's still be chin and earlobes above most other songs you'd buy off iTunes. Hell, just a few days prior, I had considered buying the Bastion Soundtrack for the same amount of money, and it only has 22 songs. As it turns out, I should have purchased the Bastion Soundtrack, and heeded its words more carefully. Indeed, some day, these tears were gonna spill.

After taking a few minutes to download iTunes and get an account set up, I moseyed on over to the soundtrack, and-- wait, what? You know, Gamefreak, when I said “if even as much as half of them were proper songs”, I wasn't just trying to win a pretentious-sounding sentence competition. That was supposed to be an exaggeration. I didn't expect that that would be anywhere close to the truth. Well, whatever. Even just 20 songs makes for a pretty burly album, so I shouldn't complain. I'll just click on the “buy” button, enter some credit card information, fail to understand how the money that I'm spending correlates to real world time spent working, and get on with my life. Eh? It says the connection has been reset, and the purchase couldn't be completed. And if I try it again? Same thing. I guess I'll check out the internet to see what they have to say about this problem. This guy says that his problem went away after he logged out of iTunes then logged back in, so I guess I'll try that. No, that didn't work. This says that switching my DNS settings solved this guys similar problem. For all I know, DNS stands for “Do Not Switch”, but if someone on the internet says it's a good idea, who am I to argue? And... nothing. Same error. Maybe my firewall is blocking all the grass and ice types from getting in? Let's see what happens if I disable that for a bit. Huh. That didn't work either. I'm kind of running out of ideas now. Maybe it'll work if I try switching this narrative from present tense back to past tense? But that didn't work either.

The remainder of this story will be told in first person omniscient.

The error message seemed to indicate that some kind of error was occurring with my network as the album was being downloaded, so I reasoned that it may have been the size of the album that was causing the error. To test this hypothesis, I tried downloading a song. To my surprise, and immediate regret, the download was successful, and I found myself in possession of a song I had already possessed.

Pictured: Immediate Regret

So individual songs were able to slip past the music embargo iTunes had placed on my computer, but what about albums? I didn't know if all albums would produce the same error, or if it was just the Pokemon soundtrack. And, being a scientist, I knew that there was only one way to test my hypothesis: by experiment. So I decided to try to buy a different album, and see if it would work. So, with as little consideration as possible, (consideration is the enemy of scientific endeavors) I decided to buy The Decemberists' newest album, The King is Dead, because, hey, why not? I mean, sure, I spent $10 on an album that I could have just listened to on Spotify for free, but... wait. Actually, that is a pretty good answer to the question “Why not?”.  But the real kicker was when I later found out that I could have bought the Bastion Soundtrack on iTunes for the same price as elsewhere, killing two birds with one stone.

Pictured: Delayed Regret

At this point, I had had it. It was time to bring out the big guns. If no one else on the Apple forums had asked about this problem,  I guess it was up to me to nut up and do the opposite of shut up. So I made my own little discussion about how I could download other songs and albums, but not the Pokemon X and Y soundtrack. And apparently this is a problem others have experienced, as 8 other people indicated that they had the same question. While I was waiting, I figured that I might as well listen to some of the music I just bought. But, of course, my hardships were not over yet. Whenever I tried to play about half of the songs, it would ask me to authorize my computer to play my iTunes music. After entering my credentials, it would tell me that my computer was already authorized, only to ask for authorization again if I tried to make like Sam and play it again.

And in the face of all of this, I kept circling back to one question: Why? Why is iTunes the top music merchant in the world if this is how their software works? It certainly isn't because of quality. As it turns out, when you buy music from iTunes, you don't actually get an MP3 file, and whatever it is that you get, it isn't compatible with anything other than iTunes, and converting it to a more widely usable file is expensive, inconvenient, or illegal. And the whole "authorization" thing I mentioned earlier. You can authorize 5 computers to play your iTunes music, and then your account is basically dead, and you can't play that music on any other computer, as far as I can tell. And for what benefit? Why do we, as a society, allow Apple's monopoly on music to persist? Is it just because we've come to associate digital music with iTunes, and are too lazy to try something else, like Amazon Music or Google Play? And I think it's a real shame, because iTunes has a vast library, with even more music than Spotify.

Pictured: Even more music

 And at this point, I was going to lecture to lecture on the evils of DRM, and how information wants to be free, and how I wish that I could support the people who made some music that I enjoy without the money going to an evil corporation that is an enemy of Liberty and Justice. But I just managed to download the Pokemon soundtrack, and I'm quite enjoying it, even if many of the best songs are above my clearance at the moment. So I guess you win this round, Apple. I'll save my jokes about how you're "rotten to the core" for another day.

And what of the end of our tale? How was it that that most cursed of days drew to a close? I listened to Hyadain and cried myself to sleep. And that, kids, is how you make a silver lining out of a mole hill.

Pictured: ADVANCED joke overuse

Of F-holes and G-strings

On the internet, and indeed, perhaps even in real life, (I don't have enough experience there to know for sure) the most important thing in the world is to feel like you're better than everyone else. Now, in the olden days, when your crusty old parents were still nice and doughy, you had to actually do things to be better than everyone else. Something great, like winning a gold medal at the Olympics, or discovering a new element, or writing a blog (ladies). But then, a great man invented the internet, and decided that He would be the last person to ever have to put effort into feeling better than everyone else. You see, nowadays, you can feel superior not for the things you create, but for the things you consume. Why write a book of your own when you can feel better than anyone who has ever read Twilight just by reading literally anything that isn't Twilight? (Hating on Twilight is sure to keep me hip and trendy with the kids, right?) Why start a band of your own when you can feel better than everyone else just by listening to music they've never heard of? Indeed, it is that second example that I'm running with, because it's become a common phenomenon in recent years for people to judge others based on their taste in music, with the quality of one's taste being inversely proportional to how many people have heard of the bands they like. However, there is a way to beat this system, a way to prove that you're better than everyone by going in the exact opposite direction: Composers that everyone's heard of, but tragically few people actually listen to. That's right, this is a post about Classical Music!

Before I go any further, I feel I should explain the title. As I'm sure you know, all violins have a two little holes in them that are shaped kind of like an "f", or an integral sign, a fact which has not been lost on anyone who has ever made a Calculus textbook.

A good violinist always remembers to add C

This hole is, hilariously, called an f-hole by real people who probably have graduate degrees and loving families. The G-String, on the other hand, is the lowest string on the Violin, probably. Its inclusion is a reference to Johann Sebastian Bach's "Air on The G String", which is only played on the G-String. My title is certainly a reference to that, apropros of something. But it's totally not a reference to something else that is referencing that. I definitely did not start listening to classical music because of something that I played or read.

I swear, officer, I've never seen that penguin before in my life.

And here I find myself in the strange position of name-dropping a song that's kind of by Bach, but not quite, for the second time on this blog. Previously it was Ave Maria, based on Bach's "Prelude in C Major" from The Well Tempered Clavier. But "Air on The G String" is actually just an arrangement by some show-offy violinist proving that he could play Bach's "Air" on just one string. I think that's an interesting coincidence, and there are plenty of people willing to confuse coincidence with humor, and I'm willing to take advantage of that.

So, what can you do to to become a savvy listener of Real Art? Basically just check out Spotify, man. That's all there really is to it. There's actually an app called "Classify", in a pathetic attempt at humor worthy of this blog, that is an app for just classical music. Though technically, the "Classical" period only includes 1750-1830, it has music from the entire Common Practice Era, from 1600-1900, as well as newer stuff, probably. But if you're the kind of person who knows the difference between "Baroque", "Classical", and "Romantic" eras, then you should be the one spreading the good word, so I'm not making a fool of myself just because I apparently have a thing for girls who can't play the violin. Just another weird thing about me, if you're still keeping score.

Some people were meant to keep their integrals on paper

But before you dive right in, you might as well listen to the greatest song of all time, a composition with the catchy title "Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G Minor". Actually, that joke about the catchy name was hardly even sarcastic. It would seem that most great composers cared enough to create some of the most stunningly beautiful art in human history, but not quite enough to give them proper names. As such, you'll find that a lot of songs have titles that consist of some broad category of composition like "Symphony" or "Concerto", a number, maybe an opus, a couple other nonsense letters and numbers, and a key. If any actual title is included, it's shoved at the back, where you can't even see it, and was probably made up by someone other than the composer, after his death. After the composer's death, that is. The person who made up the title was (hopefully) very much alive when he did so.

But back to Hungarian Dance... actually, you know what? Screw it. Just find everything by the London Symphony Orchestra, and listen to it. I just found that they have a cover of "The Final Countdown", and I'm freaking out a little bit right now. This is in addition to the two albums of greatest hits video game music they've produced, and the 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music playlist that's provided me with much of the classical music I've been listening to. In even more addition, they've got a whole host of Star Wars and classic rock music. "Eye of the Tiger"? You bet. "Hey, Jude"? Sure. "Bohemian Rhapsody"? I've already got an orchestral version of that, but sure, why the hell not? Ironically, Spotify is currently down for me, so I'm having trouble finding an exhaustive list of all their music.

Actually, now that we're on the subject of orchestral covers of great songs, you might as well check out Walt Ribeiro, (Youtube name: ForOrchestra) who makes some pretty boss orchestral covers of songs like "Gotta Catch'em All", "Gangnam Style", "My Little Pony", and "The Thong Song". Apparently he comes out with a new arrangement every week, but I'm not sure what day. I certainly hope that it isn't Thursday... Too Soon.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

That was supposed to be an image of Thomas O'brien, but since I couldn't find one, I decided to pay my respects elsewhere.

Now that my internet is back online and I'm too distracted by it to make jokes about how dependent I am on the internet, I can check Spotify, and I now know that you should absolutely not try to listen to everything by the London Symphony Orchestra. Unless you live in a country with a mean healthcare system, (Thanks, Obama!*) the total runtime of all their music may outlast your life expectancy. I went to their page, and the songs just keep going down and down forever, until your scroll wheel grinds into the chassis of your mouse. I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the way, it just loops back up to the top, and you keep scrolling down forever, like Bowser's Infinite Staircase.

Pictured: The London Symphony Orchestra

I would just like to make clear at this point that I am entirely aware that making a post about Classical Music was a bad idea. When I first had it, I thought it might be bad, when I told my secondary Content Manager about it, she seemed all for it, but I suspected that it might be bad, and now that I'm cheekbone-deep into it, I am certain that it is bad. But I can't give up now, because the word of orchestral "Final Countdown" must be spread. Everyone must know of it, and if I deprive even a single person of that joy by not finishing this, then I scarcely believe that I could ever forgive myself.

Since I'm talking about Classical music, I would be remiss to not talk about some composers, if only to provide some evidence that I have some semblance of an idea of what I'm talking about. (But don't tell the judge. Forged evidence is serious business.) Since I already mentioned Bach, I guess I'll go back to talking about him. Or I guess I could say "Bach" to talking about him, if you need a reason to hate me. Johann Sebastian Bach, or "The Big Bach", as he's called by hopefully only fictional persons, was a great composer. He's apparently considered the greatest composer of all time by a lot of people, and I'm certainly not going to argue. Technically, he isn't a Classical composer, but a Baroque composer, but as I've said before, no one asked all that. His greatness stems from the fact that his name was "Johann", and with a name like that, you can't help but be classy and great. It's a proven fact.

According to Google Image Search, this man was probably great.

Moving on in both alphabetical order and greatness, we get to Beethoven. Now, if you ask the average person to name a Classical composer, they'll probably throw out Mozart. But if you ask them to hum a classical song, they'll probably come up with something by Beethoven. Ludwig Van Beethoven is classical music. Named after the oldest Koopaling, [citation not needed] he has composed some of the most recognizable songs of all time, like "Fur Elise", "Ode to Joy", and "This song that I will forever associate with a girl whaling on her younger brother". (That's a link, in case you're curious) Beethoven famously went deaf, but he still wrote music. That's how great he was. He wasn't about to let an organ as dumb as his ears tell him what made music good. He was so good that only italicized font can convey how good he was. Mozart was definitely a great composer, but the beginning of one of his most popular songs was ripped off of Mario Brothers, anyway, so I'm not sure that I can say he was as great as Beethoven.

The last composer that I really care to mention would have to be Tchaikovsky, perhaps my personal favorite composer. He has a lot of famous compositions, like "Swan Lake", "The 1812 Overture", and "That song that plays when Spongebob gets the suds" (That's not a link, because I'm confident you all know what I'm talking about.) He also wrote "Romeo and Juliet: Fantasy Overture", a name that you probably don't recognize, for a song that you almost certainly do. Any time two characters are in love, this is the song that plays. You remember that part of "A Christmas Story" where Ralphie is imagining the teacher grading papers, and then she falls in love with his essay? That was this song. Tchaikovsky has a great skill for writing long compositions that don't sound boring or drawn-out, and for that, he gets mad respect.

And that's really all I have to say about about classical music. Just follow these tips, and you too can have more class than a community college! But even though all of these composers are very great, they still can't hold a candle to the one true genre of music: "Neoclassical Darkwave". (Pay close attention, and you can catch bits of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor)

Bonus Joke: Pachelbel only ever wrote one canon, so he had to make sure that it was something that would be really memorable. An important part of any composition is its key signature, so when it came time decide, he remembered the immortal words of Renee Descartes... and he gave it the D.

Or, if you prefer your jokes in the form of couplets in iambic pentameter...

When Pachelbel decided "Canon"s Key
He made just like Descartes, and gave The D.


*Sarcasm applied at the reader's discretion

Creep Deprivation

A wise man once said that the easiest way to fix something is to break it so hard that it becomes fixed again. Actually, I believe it was said by a most curious man made entirely of grass clippings, who rode through my house on a glitterific unicycle not to long ago. He seemed pretty wise to me, so I've decided to follow his advice. Results so far have been inconclusive, as the police managed to wrestle me away from the drifter that I was trying to pound back to life before my research bore any fruit. Wait, is "I killed a drifter" humor in line with this blog's sensibilities? I have a feeling that corpse mutilations is one of those things that wouldn't make the cut if my mentally faculties were fully intact. Then again, I'd hope that a full intactness of my mental faculties would prevent me from wasting my time in the first place, but whatever.

Anyway, the thing that I'm trying to fix through egregious breaking is my sleep schedule. As hinted at in my previous post, I'm currently engaging in spring break. But through some cruel joke of fate, spring break doesn't last forever. My sleep schedule was immediately and ruthlessly screwed on my very first day of spring break, and it certainly hasn't gotten any better since. I've been going to bed at hours around 5 AM for most of break, and I'm going to have to start waking up at around 8 AM for college. It doesn't take a math major to tell that this is a recipe for bad times (though a culinary arts degree might help). So, in order to outwit my body, I've decided that, instead of falling asleep tonight, I'll just stay up all night, then fall asleep at a reasonable hour the next day. Now that's what I call strategy!

Clearly, trying to be productive during this time would be a fool's errand. I can hardly be productive when I'm firing on all cylinders, (This is just a metaphor. It's not like I actually have cylinders  like I'm some kind of engine, because that would mean I'm a robot, and we all know that's impossible and ridiculous and you should be ashamed for thinking that) so trying to get anything done when I'm mega-tired is laughable at best, and also laughable at worst, because laughable is really the only adjective up to the task of describing this. So, instead, I'm doing this. You know how everything you say is super-hilarious at 5:00 AM? That must mean that it's the perfect time to write for the internet, because we all know that it's because of an increase in quality, rather than a decrease in standards that causes this phenomenon.

So now I have get to the most difficult part of the post: thinking of something to write about. I've already explained my situation, and my content manager is reasonable enough to be asleep right now. There is literally nothing more that I can say about Virtue's Last Reward that isn't a spoiler. I've talked way too goddamned much about Fire Emblem. There's nothing interesting to say about my intricately arranged collection of buzzard scalps. It seems I am at an impasse

Well, my content manager recently convinced me to write a "stream of consciousness"  piece, where I basically just typed out whatever I found in my head. The problem with this is that I can type far faster than I can think, so the process kind of ground to a halt. I deleted it, but I can't say it was too funny, so you're not missing much.

And now here I am, at 5:00 PM, and I'm hardly tired at all. Why, I could probably go days without sleeping! You heard it here first, folks: sleep is just a trick by the government, trying to steal your free time. Every time you fall asleep, President Obama gets a dollar richer, and he uses that dollar to buy the dreams of orphans, which he then messily devours as his nourishment. In fact, I'd say that this lack of sleep is enhancing my reasoning capabilities. There is absolutely no way that I'd be able to pierce this shadowy conspiracy after a morning of being tired and cranky. In fact, I think I'm going to take this opportunity to solve all the world's problems. Buckle up, because it's about to get genius in here.

First of all: A cure for cancer. Easy enough. Criminalize all sexual activity from September 22 to October 22. This will be enforced by highly skilled "sex police". I doubt that I need to further expound on what they do. Any outliers can be handled by a special offspring task force. Kind of like Fahrenheit 451, but with live human infants instead of books. That's kind of messed up.

Or, we could just tell them that The Moon isn't  even a planet.

The energy crisis. Well, if there's anything I've learned from my physics class, it's that to deal maximum damage to your professor's head, you're going to want to throw a large object, buy you're also going to want it to have high velocity, to maximize kinetic energy. But the second most important thing is that everything is relative. Sure, you may be stationary with respect the ground, which means that you have zero kinetic energy. But you could be moving at about 30,000 m/s with respect to the sun. So, if you have a mass of, say, 72 kg, you would have a kinetic energy of about 3*10^10 J, which is about 10 times more than the energy consumption of the average clothes dryer in a single year. Doesn't that make you feel better about energy? You're like 10 clothes dryers hurtling through space!

I can't get a girl. Wait, what? Who let that in the list of problems? One, that isn't even a problem. Logicians the world over have derived many proofs for the statement that if one is of the female sex, that individual may be assumed to be psychologically impaired, a result often shortened to "Bitches be crazy". Two, I very definitely could, but I know of good reasons not to, so I don't. Tired me is a deceptive asshole. Don't listen to him.

Pic Unrelated

Global Warming! That's a big one. We could go with the tried-and-true Futurama method of dumping ice cubes into the water every year, but cubes are a choleric shape by nature, so their affinity for fire may reverse any good that they could potentially do. What this requires is some design thinking. Using metaphors. Let's say for a moment that the earth is like a bowl of soup, despite the fact that that's a simile, and I specifically called for a metaphor. The oceans are the soup, and the continents are the... edges of the bowl? The crackers that you crumble in? The third, funny thing that might be found in soup, thus completing this joke? Perhaps. And what do you do with soup when it's too hot? You blow on it! And why do you blow? Peer pressure! Because it never actually helps, but we all do it anyway, because we saw grown-ups do it when we were young.  Now, skirting right by the crude joke I just made, we can apply this to the earth by making... like... a giant machine that blows? Like a vacuum in reverse. Or one of those Dyson fans that doesn't chop the air, but rather propels a pleasant breeze by the will of the Heart of the Zephyr. That would be a pretty convenient truth, amirite?

Education. Honestly, I have too many actual ideas about education to come up with a suitably ridiculous one. And since I sincerely doubt that many school board members will end up reading this, there's not much reason to include actual ideas. So I guess I'll just have to think something up. Sledgehammer olympics. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I like the sound of it, and I'm sure your elementary school children will think the same, up until they begin participating.

Music. As we all know, music hit its peak when you, the reader, were a teenager. So how do we get back to the good ol' days of music? Just look for music that matches your tastes on Spotify or whatever. It's as simple as that. There is too damn much music out there for you to say that none of it is good. Just because you can't find something doesn't mean that it isn't there. The cops can pretend that the corpse of that drifter isn't out there somewhere out there, but they know, and I know that it is. In this metaphor, the corpse is the music, you're the police, and... the artist is me I mean the murderer. I dunno man, I'm just trying to get some running gags going, because my gags have been rather sluggish of late.

Wow, there sure are a lot of unrelated pics in this article.

Crime, war, ect. How about everyone stops being terrible? Like, for even just a couple days, every human being makes a conscious effort to not be awful to his fellow man. I'd say that I'm more familiar that most with just how terrible the dark side of humanity is, and it's not just because I'm an egotistical jackass. It's also because I literally cannot differentiate between real people and fictional characters. But anyway, consider this a decree, a mandate from on high. I hereby order the human race to just stop being despicable. Did you know that every person you meet, every person you see, every person you hear about, is a fully realized individual, with hopes and dreams, and secrets, and fears, just like you? You know how it sucks when someone is mean to you? Well that exact same thing happens to other people when you're mean to them, regardless of your justification. As the great Raymond Smuckels said "No one should be a cock to a stranger, ever." In fact, I believe this courtesy should be extended to those you know. Is that so terrible?

Oh. Oh dear. It seems that, in my state of fatigue, I've forgotten the first, most important rule of blogging: Give the people what they came for. And preachiness is not what my readers come here for. So I apologize. Without further ado...

THE BEST TIME TO WEAR A STRIPED SWEATER
IS ALL THE TIME
ONE WITH A COLLAR
TURTLENECK
THAT'S THE KIND
BECAUSE WHEN YOU'RE WEARING
That... special... striped... sweater...

There's no need for me to type anything. You're singing it in your head already.