blarghum….phaw!

I was not high/paranoid when I heard this voicemail, but it’s hard to imagine a worse one to hear in such a state, especially since it was left by an ex-girlfriend:

Hey, it’s B—–. I was just calling to say hi… and to tell you something that I think is kind of funny, but I don’t know if it’s really funny or not, but…

So, I have this friend that is trying to call and talk to me and I don’t really feel like talking to him because he’s kind of high-maintenance so I just stopped answering the phone and returning his calls for a long time and somewhere in his head he’s got the idea that I have a drug and alcohol abuse problem. He keeps telling me about these 12-step meetings, and… so, he’s freaking out and he thinks that I’m um… like, having a really bad alcohol time or drug time right now and after he keeps leaving me these freaked-out messages I sent him a text message that said that I’m not in the mood to talk on the phone, sorry, hope you’re doing well…

So today, he had somebody call me from Marijuana Anonymous because, I guess, he’s convinced that I’m smoking marijuana. I think it’s kind of funny because I think you probably would think it’s funny, too — somebody thinking that I’m constantly getting high… nyeeh…

Okay, so I hope it made you laugh or something… I was like, MA? What’s MA, Massachusetts? Marijuana Anonymous! Whoo-hoo! Okay, bye.

I wrote this once before, I don’t want to have to write it again. The following script fetches all historical podcasts of This American Life, appropriately sets the filename, timestamp, and MP3 ID3v2 tags. (Notes: It will break once thislife.org’s style sheet changes. Also, that ^M in there is a ctrl-M, not a caret-M.)

#!/bin/bash

#depends: id3v2 unhtml
#active knowledge of the episode number of the most recent episode

if [ ! -e working ]
then
  mkdir working
fi

for x in `seq 1 360`
do
  cd working; wget -q http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/$x.mp3; cd ..
  wget -qO /tmp/$x.html http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=$x

  isRerun=`cat /tmp/$x.html | grep ctl00_Content_Body_lblInitialDate`
  if [ ${#isRerun} -gt 100 ]
  then
    MONTH=`echo $isRerun | unhtml | awk -F. '{print $1}' | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
    DAY=`  echo $isRerun | unhtml | awk -F. '{print $2}' | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
    YEAR=` echo $isRerun | unhtml | awk -F. '{print $3}' | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
  else
    MONTH=`cat /tmp/$x.html | grep lblAirDate | unhtml | awk -F. '{print $1}' | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
    DAY=`  cat /tmp/$x.html | grep lblAirDate | unhtml | awk -F. '{print $2}' | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
    YEAR=` cat /tmp/$x.html | grep lblAirDate | unhtml | awk -F. '{print $3}' | sed 's/[^0-9]//g'`
  fi
  TITLE=`cat /tmp/$x.html | grep ctl00_Content_Body_lblTitle | unhtml | awk -F": " '{print $2}' | sed 's/^M//g'`
  id3v2 -A "This American Life" -a "Chicago Public Radio" -g 12 -T $x -y $YEAR -t "$TITLE" working/$x.mp3
  touch -t ${YEAR}${MONTH}${DAY}0000 working/$x.mp3
  TITLE=`echo $TITLE | sed s/\\\//-/g`
  if [ $x -lt 10 ]
  then
    mv working/$x.mp3 "00$x - $TITLE.mp3"
  else
    if [ $x -lt 100 ]
    then
      mv working/$x.mp3 "0$x - $TITLE.mp3"
    else
      mv working/$x.mp3 "$x - $TITLE.mp3"
    fi
  fi
  rm /tmp/$x.html
done
mv working/*mp3 . ; rmdir working

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1564024/bio

This is poetry. Sheer fucking genius as channeled through the purest of voices.

http://www.blackholehunter.org/ringtones.html

Dear Brand New Toilet Plunger,

Welcome to my life. It is my sincere hope that you perform your singular duty with a quality that exceeds your predecessor. Have courage new friend, for it will be a bar easily cleared.

Yours most truly,

The Schwazz

Dear my falsetto,

Please don’t ever leave me. I’d be lost without you. I’ve seen the way some accomplished vocalists have had their upper registers desert them, and I couldn’t bear the thought if the same happened to you and me. And I don’t even mean for rocking out, though that’s where we work best together, obviously… You know that as a baritone, I’d have no chance to follow along with every other tenor in the world. But most critically, I’d lose my favorite way to mock the deserving.

Whatever it takes to keep you happy. Name it.

Desperately yours,

The Schwazz