I had a $100 gift certificate at Best Buy for buying my cell phone the other month and today I decided to cash it in on an LG Super Multi DVD Writer, which seems to burn all the current crazy formats. I decided I wanted one of these things after I was going to drag out the source files for my album and realized it took up 4 CDs and for a few minutes I couldn't find one of them.

Notes From the Underground is an interesting article written by a subway musician about his experiences. His list of three suggestions for musicians are: 1. Drop the price of CDs, 2. Branch out and 3. Embrace file-sharing. I more or less agree with all of those and I think have tried to do them all, so hooray, merit points for me. (I still find mostly gay porn when I search for 'brad sucks' on Kazaa or Shareaza though.)

A comment on point #1: after selling a lot of CDs myself at his recommended price of $5, I'm not sure how important that was in selling the CDs. I did it because I just wanted my music out there and realized I could sell my CD at $5 with shipping included and not lose money. I think that's what they call "desperation".

I wish I had a way to know how my CD would have sold if it was $6 or $10 or $20. If I ask, most people deny that they would have paid a penny more, obviously because they'd rather get it for $5 - and I can't blame them. It'd be even better if they could get it for $2.50 or a shiny nickel, but what people want to pay for things and what they actually cost aren't usually the same numbers an economy has told me.

Anyhow, I don't really have a point other than to say after my experiences I'm not convinced the price is all that important. Regular people (ie. non-musicians and other people who don't care about the RIAA) didn't seem too wowed by my $5 price. I was hoping they'd be all "OH MY GOD, FIVE DOLLARS WITH SHIPPING INCLUDED, HOW COULD I *NOT* BUY THIS??" but that hasn't happened much. At times I've gotten the impression that the unusually low price makes them worried they're getting tricked somehow, but the confusion makes it easier to subdue and rob them though, so I guess it all works out.

Saw the specialist today. He was all "you have tennis elbow" and I was all "but I've been treated for tennis elbow and nothing's working and furthermore I was having hand problems way before anyone said I had tennis elbow" and then I was pitted in a game of arm strength and dexterity versus him and I won (because I am fiercely competitive). I was told I have no nerve damage and my x-ray looks fine (though I could see in his eyes that he meant to say "F-I-N-E FINE" and howl like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith). So he suggested I friction treat my elbow (ie. rub it) and ice it and also do some weights to take the pressure off the something or others and then come back in March if it's not magically healed. Then I drank some fine discount Australian wine and started writing this paragraph. Personally I feel pretty let down about the appointment. This arm's been pissing me off for like a year and a half to two years now and these are all things I've tried before. I can't play keyboards, I can't play guitar for more than thirty minutes without pain++ and also I have to whine about it all the time and nobody likes a whiner I hear.

I picked up my elbow x-ray today to take to the specialist on Wednesday. Here is a picture of my totally nude elbow:

This elbow is (c) 1976-2004 brad, all rights completely reserved.

What's awesome is spending lots of time on the phone with OfficeMax customer service trying to get them to do something about my December 10th order of bubble envelopes that still hasn't even shipped. They claim one business day shipping on most orders and have the delivery date on the order projected as December 12th, 2003 which is practically a million billion years ago. The status code even says "PIP - order received, filling order in delivery center" like I'm some sort of sub-idiot man-jerk. I am in fact typing this up as I'm sitting on hold listening to OfficeMax advertisements ("when you think ink, think OfficeMax!"). This is the third time I've called them today, the previous two times I've been transferred to other departments. One time I wound up on the phone with a bank for some reason which, the lady I was talking to there agreed, was totally the wrong place for me to be.

This is actually an improvement over the two other occasions I've called them since the 10th asking about my order. Both of those times I was told someone would call me back and nobody did. So I at least feel a bit better about being transferred around even if it means each time I reach a dead end I have to hang up and call back and wait for one of their representatives to be free. I at least feel like I'm just one transfer away from a solution rather than waiting for a phone call that will never ever come, ever.

If there is ever a market for tell-all books by musicians (possibly with lots of swearing) on the subject of postage and envelopes and office supplies and maybe the crushing impact of this knowledge on a person's ability to write songs, I am going to god damn write it.

Still on hold. I hope I'm at least getting punk rock indie cred or something for this.

A nice person named Kelly wrote in to tell me that my song Making Me Nervous was played on the first Acts of Volition radio session. Not only do I like it because it features me among such lofty company as The Postal Service and The Darkness and The Weakerthans, but I've been moaning about the lack of indie DJ's for a while now, wondering why more people aren't doing more stuff like this. Here's what Steven says about putting together the session:

I like the idea of assembling a bit of music, talking about who it is and why I like it, and making it available for download. An hour show could be posted for download and those interested could listen at their convenience (much like we enjoy the Strong Bad emails at HomeStarRunner.com or a new edition of The Onion each week).

Seems like a great idea to me. Of course I'm on 26.4k dialup so I'll have to listen to it some other time like a chump.

Because I am a living joke and wish to document it, here is what I'm going to see the doctor about tomorrow: 1. Sound in my right ear is still all wickedly muffled (fluid behind the eardrum)!

2. Awesome spells of sexy nausea (maybe a sinus infection)!

3. Ears also awesomely ringing constantly (no idea why! hopefully sinus infection related!)!!

4. To get the x-rays of my super destroyed right arm to take to the arthroscopic surgeon on Wednesday (maybe a detached tendon in my elbow!)!!!

And god only knows what other problems I will come down with before 2:30 tomorrow afternoon.

I hope everyone had a nice New Years eve. Mine had cops, lawyers, scotch, video games and noise complaints! Then there was a lot of other socializing which is frankly a big crazy blur. Now I hope to return to nice boring routine for a while.

I added a guestbook because people seem to just leave general comments wherever on the site. Thanks to thegirliematters for her Movable Type guestbook tutorial thang.

I've been told the interview I did last week showed up on NPR and they played some of MC Frontalot's track. That's pretty cool.

So for a while now I've been thinking about buying a sexy new guitar. I'm not much of a guitar nerd, but after seeing the band Saturday Looks Good To Me perform months ago I decided (without knowing what one is) that I wanted a hollow body guitar. Something that's a little bit cool and a little bit retarded. After vaguely describing what I desired, my good buddies on the Songfight IRC channel pointed me to the Ibanez Artcore AFS75T:

So I am all ready with my money and my desire for the new hotness guitar. Should be a pretty simple process after this, but I play guitar left handed.

Here are the two main ways this is annoying:

1. I can't find a store around here where I can try one of these guitars out. 2. It's not clear whether a left handed version of this guitar actually exists.

And if we were to ever get past those two, there would be:

3. The left handed guitar is probably more expensive than the right handed.

So it's looking pretty bleak for the left-handed guitar lust.

Did a kinda sleepy interview about Outside the Inbox for Future Tense today, which is a 5 minute technology show that (if I remember right) airs on about 70 public radio stations in the US. Pretty sweet!

I got these books for Christmas and I'm pretty excited about reading them: Songwriters on Songwriting Tunesmith Melody in Songwriting Money Chords: A Songwriter's Sourcebook of Popular Chord Progressions

Maybe I'll be able to write songs again after I read them.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!

I got an email from CD Baby over the weekend updating me on the progress of the digital distribution service. Apparently I Don't Know What I'm Doing is up on MusicNet which is AOL's bundled music service. If anyone's on AOL out there and wants to let me know if my stuff actually shows up, that'd be real cool. The list of pending services is pretty nifty: iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, MusicMatch, BuyMusic, Emusic and AudioLunchbox. Apparently the album has been delivered to most of them so it's just a matter of them sticking it online.

I kind of just bumbled into this digital distribution thing but I'm finding it more and more exciting as time goes on and the world slowly changes. People in real life are talking more and more about various digital music services and having my stuff on there feels somehow like I have snuck infinite copies of my dumb album onto the shelves of some massive international store. And I likes sneakin'.

My album I Don't Know What I'm Doing is now up on Magnatune. This means you can listen to, buy and download high quality versions (including full CD-quality WAV). The price is flexible, you can pay anything from $5 to $18 and I get 50% of whatever you decide to pay. Pretty cool! I'm real interested to see what happens and happy to be on board with the not evil folks at Magnatune.

Got it installed. It was pretty easy and nothing seems to have been broken. SWEET. God I just want to smash my old CPU fan into pieces for the amount of awful noise it subjected me to. Why would anyone suffer with NOISY HELL when you could have SWEET QUIET BLISS. Once again the flower cooler is well worth it and I am so so happy with it. Go buy one at QuietPC or wherever the heck else they sell Zalman coolers around you. Looks like I give up about 5 degrees of CPU cooling to run it on the absolute quietest mode. There's a fan speed control included so I can crank it up if I decide I care, which I doubt I ever will, ever.

I now have in my possession the previously mentioned Zalman CNPS6000-Cu Flower Cooler and I'm trying to drink up some courage to install it. I'm pretty good with computers but I am also sometimes an idiot who just plum breaks stuff he loves for no good reason at all. Such is the hex placed on me by that witch I dissed.

Many annoying things happened today, causing me to miss the CJAD interview. My apologies to anyone tuning in to listen, I am an ass and life is junk.

I'm going to be on CJAD radio in Montreal tonight at 12:45 plugging Outside the Inbox. If I remember right it's going to be simulcast on CFRB in Toronto as well, but I'm not real sure.