Two things.

One, I suppose we should consider it a small mercy that those freecreditreport.com ads haven't inspired an actual, charted novelty hit. Unless they have, but please don't tell me about it.

Two: the Georgian Eric Wareheim?

Songs To Perform Psychic Surgery To, Or With
one of a series

Battles - "Tonto"
At night, in my car, parked and sealed off from the world; when this song starts its long slowdown I start to worry my heart is going with it. This part doesn't feel written, but a natural consequence of physical laws of momentum and resistance.

Bruce Sterling is usually a moderately prolific blogger, but today he was totally all over the place. Proof that every bust is somebody's boom. And also our full-scale global freak-out demands some Bruce Sterling or Sterling-style explication.

Essential discoveries of 2008:

• peach yogurt

Yogurt in general, but have you tried this peach stuff? What other basic foodstuffs am I out of the loop on? Now I am anxious and worried about this. See also "I bet there are some books written that I would like only I haven't heard of them."

• Pictures of Sad Children
• This thing here.
• iPod Touch

I'm pretty sure these Apple guys are on to something with this thing. It is how astronauts from Earth Colony 2 listen to music and play checkers.

The rest of the year's events are already slipping into the undistinguished roar of the past, though I'm pretty sure there were several more things that were awesome. I went to Sasquatch, which was not bad at all.

A few thoughts on Christmas on Mars: It is surprisingly subtle. It is, as you really ought to expect, walking a fine line between buzzy craziness and humane simplicity. And it is on occasion very funny.

Anyway, I sort of expected, since there was an alien in a Santa Claus suit, you'd get some sort of key moment involving him, but there wasn't, or not such as I was expecting. And in retrospect I like that.

What you should do is go to their MySpace and listen to "Riding To Work In The Year 2025" a thousand times.

". . . but at least I've got my blueberries with me."

My top three bands of 2008:

1. The Fiery Furnaces
2. Animal Collective
3. The Hold Steady

(Extra top band of Quarter Four '08: Mount Eerie)

Conclusions derived from too little data:

• 2008 is the year I lost all interest in personally identifiable narrative.

Or at least I don't have any obvious ins to songs about tough-luck street kids, ship captains, or whatever exactly is going on in Widow City.

This isn't quite the point I thought I was making originally. These days I like songs that tell complicated stories.

I had just finished reading Infinite Jest for the first time, after being busy all weekend with hiking and friends, only to hear, from Neal Stephenson, that David Foster Wallace killed himself.

(Not that he was telling me personally, but he had some thoughts to share at a book reading.)

This is a disaster.

"I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse
It had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things
To store everything in there"

July 1st marks the five year anniversary of my grown-up employment.

Some possible birthday playlist entries, listed in random order:
"Forever" - Circulatory System
"I Was Born (A Unicorn)" - The Unicorns
"You Are a Runner and I am My Father's Son" - Wolf Parade
"I Don't Want To Grow Up" - Scarlett Johansson
"Moving to L.A." - Art Brut
"Shrivel-Up" - Devo
"Older" - They Might Be Giants
"College" - Animal Collective
"Bury Me With It" - Modest Mouse
"The Glow Pt. 2" - The Microphones
"Talkin' 'Bout The Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever)" - The Flaming Lips
"Turn Into Something" - Animal Collective
"Happy Birthday, Mr. Burns" - The Ramones
"Sick Priest Learns To Last Forever" - Destroyer
"(Since you joined) The Corp." - Hello (The Band)
"Old Man" - Neil Young
"Following Through" - The Dismemberment Plan
"(I Want To Live On An) Abstract Plain" - Frank Black
"All Worn Out" - The Minus 5
"Formerly Hail Centurion" - The Minus 5
"My Horoscope Said It Would Be A Bad Year" - Beulah
"That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" Mission Of Burma
"It's Not My Birthday" - They Might Be Giants

Candidates that occur to me while pasting the above: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" - The Arcade Fire, "The Times They Are A Changing" - Bob Dylan, "Time That Bald Sexton" - Danielson, "Sons & Daughters" - The Decemberists, "Kids Don't Know Shit" - Islands

Terminators < Cylons