Edwin MacPhisto

I doubt it. They're separate releases, both in the band's discography and on Soundscan.

I thought about grabbing Exile, but gave it another couple of rounds. Sacrebleu!

I know you were just picking an example, but I see Supreme Clientele for $12 at big box stores all the time. I don't think it retails for more than that. My music consumption has dropped off sharply over the past 4 months. I attribute this mostly to a shift in offices--I used to commute 30 minutes on the subway each way, and now it's about 10. A lot less time for listening. Usually though, I just steal a ton of stuff and then buy the albums I really like. I bought 40-50 albums every year in college, largely because I was a 10-minute walk from a fantastic local music store that had a killer used selection, all the rare stuff I wanted, and good prices. It's a lot easier to go buy music when you aren't in an office from 9 to 6 every day.

CONSECUTIVE FUGAZIIIIIII If Spermy grabs 13 Songs, it's tic-tac-toe in this bitch.

My 360 is now freezing about 15 seconds into gameplay for either Call of Duty or Bioshock. Are we on our way to the fabled red rings here?

His scale of winning a war appears to be "look at how many we killed vs. how many of our guys died." We killed 100,000 brown folk, guys! Great. They probably would have killed each other anyway without us having to flop our big world heroes/presumptuous interventionist dong down on Baghdad. Lots of people look at war that way. Casualty comparisons and cost. Vietnam cost 2% of our GDP, and I can't find the stats now, but I believe Iraq round 2 is well under 1%. If these are your criteria, then yeah, keep on fighting, who cares. I think they're miserable criteria, but if you can accept that a war enthusiast is more likely to frame it in the context of damages not done/costs not accrued to our side, it's a bit easier to understand "we'll stay 100 years if we have to."

I thought about taking some VU at various points, as high as pick #4, but made arguments in my head to prioritize other stuff instead. One of the problems there was that I couldn't decide which of their albums I would want, while I knew pretty solidly what I wanted from whom in other cases.

In high school, I would have said Achtung Baby, because U2 was my favorite band ever and that was my legit favorite album for about 5 years. In college, I might have considered War since I was pushing that early 80s post-punk martial drums thing pretty hard. But now, I'd probably say The Joshua Tree. It's pretty tough to beat that opening trio, and after 20 years the whole album still has a pretty unique sound. Not sure anyone else has made an album that sounds that consistently epic and swirling and blah blah blah that I actually like.

I don't have the same dislike of "Girlfriend" and "Burn This Disco Out" that Slim does--in fact, I really like the latter and think the former is fun and sly, and a much better "cute" song than "The Girl Is Mine." I think the higher lows (which essentially is saying "more consistent") makes it a more enjoyable album in full, while Thriller I'm more inclined to listen to song by song. It's fucking great, but it doesn't feel as cohesive, if that makes sense. "Billie Jean" is the best song on either of them.

Purple Rain, and it's not close for me (duh). All Princely adoration aside, Purple Rain is a lyrical, vocal, and compositional peak for pop music. Prince's greater involvement in the instrumentation of his album helps in an academic argument, since dancing doesn't really show up on record. With the exception of "Billie Jean," I think Purple Rain also more compelling stories and weird psychoses packed into it, which is a big part of why it's such a peak. I prefer Off the Wall to Thriller, even if on face the latter is a better comparison for Purple Rain, because of the titanic singles, huge sales, and peak popularity for Jackson.

Being much more of a jazz novice than I should be, that was the one I was thinking about taking, just to have some in the collection. Alas. Anyway, I wonder how many "YOU SONOFABITCH"-esque replies I'll get for this one: Slint - Spiderland Every collection needs an apocalypse. One of the most explosive and emotionally devastating albums I know, Spiderland is 6 harrowing songs. That's it. Weird, dreamlike narratives of the dead heartland, strange time signatures, and loud-soft-really loud at its finest. I always want to have this album with me, for thunderstorms and other such awesome occasions. I MISS YOOOOOOOU, indeed.

If you like single-player FPS, Bioshock is far and away the most immersive one I've played. Even tops the original Half-Life. Another recommendation for COD4--multiplayer is near-perfect, and the single-player is pretty fine as well--and definitely Mass Effect if you have any interest in action-RPGs.

Curry's going nuts. 18 points in the first 11 minutes of the second half. I admit, Davidson has probably proven to have the easiest draw of any 10 seed, but that shouldn't diminish how fantastic they've been. Curry's the focal point, but the whole team is on tonight, just dismantling Wisco.

Cigarettes, or black folk? I have been known to accidentally walk into both.

16 Stormfront posters read that and got outrageous boners. And yeah, you can smoke at restaurants/bars in VA. We don't have a ban yet.

My roommate just fielded a rather distressed call from one of our coworkers over in Iraq. Apparently the rocket attacks on the IZ are considerably worse than what CNN and the like are conveying, and Embassy staff are puking all over the place out of anxiety. I kind of just wanted to pass along that puking detail. Tasty!

Does other two programs mean "two more law schools," or did you apply to different stripes of graduate programs in the end, too?

Yeah. If you expanded it to Bowie v. Beatles, I'd have to go Beatles, but I think he beats any of them on their own.

Bowie, though I feel somewhat unqualified to comment. I've heard pretty much the whole Bowie catalog through Scary Monsters, and I've never given solo Lennon outside of "Oh Yoko" much attention. I probably take too much away from Lennon because although he was often the driving force, the Beatles were still a group and a lot of those "Lennon/McCartneys" had a fair share of McCartney to them. Still, I think it'd be hard to top Bowie for me, considering that -I like Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, and Low so much that I can't even really separate them, and insist on putting them all next to each other whenever I make a "Top xx Albums of xx" list. -His string of amazing pop moments in the early 80s ("Under Pressure" and "Modern Love" in particular) is so, so good. -I can listen to "Station to Station," "Subterraneans," and the song from Labyrinth, and feel like I'm listening to a different guy every time. The "musical chameleon" thing is the one of the most overused descriptions in the history of rock journalism, but he really did a whole lot of awesome stuff.

I thought the same thing about Nirvana in general when I was writing up my Radiohead blurb, and actually went back to check the list of picks on the first page. We're past 100 albums now, so anything great that gets grabbed is going to seem like finding a 10-year starter at left tackle on Sunday.

Radiohead - OK Computer Boom shaka laka. Even the first time I heard the opening BRRRRWWAAHHHAIIIINGWAAAAAIIBRRRRRANGBRONNNNNG of "Airbag," I knew I would love this album. It's one of the few that I've loved since the early, early days of establishing my musical taste. The reasons why have changed considerably with time, too. That I like it more every time I revisit it after a modest absence is probably a pretty good sign. Some more of my favorite little pieces: -the "boop, boop, boop, boop" into "Paranoid Android -the triangle hit that ends the album -the fact that the guitars sound pleasantly different on all of the first 4 tracks -SUUUUUUUUCH UHHHH PREEEETTY HOUUUSE -pretty much the opening 8 bars of every song on here -the piano melodies on "Karma Police," which are doubly great because I could play them when I was 16 and felt awesome as a result. I think I was pretty much going to pick a Radiohead album as soon as The Man in Blak did. It was a tough call between this and The Bends. Along with Kid A, those two albums have circulated around in my pantheon for awhile, and on any given day I might think I like one better than the others. I chose OK Computer because, in the long view, I'd rather have the more immersive album than the collection of great songs. If I give Radiohead one piece of a small, lifetime collection, I'll give it to the album more inclined to deconstruction and perpetual appreciation.

Elizabeth Banks! This had better be a comedy.

Saw this on Glenn Greenwald's blog today, and it caught my interest because I've occasionally corresponded at work with one of the Iraqis Charlie Rose interviews in the clip. More harsh realities on how badly this whole affair has been bungled, and the cost to the people who, you know, actually live there: "We have a country where the government is not functioning after 5 years."

It's a little overwhelming after the first 8 ounces, but imagine an improved version of the crappy chocolate soda your grandparents might have bought from Pathmark or ShopRite. I only started seeing it a month ago, but I think it's in most supermarket chains now. High marks as far as weird novelty sodas go. As I do whenever there's a GnR topic, I'm gonna go watch the "Estranged" and "You Could Be Mine" videos now. Dolphins and terminators, son.

Last night I made a float with some cookie dough ice cream and a can of Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper. Highly recommended.