Comments have been shut down. Akismet is still doing a good job of keeping spammers out of my hair, but the spam-onslaught has become so vigorous and relentless that even the incredibly tiny floating-point percentage of spammers that are actually getting through are becoming a regular annoyance.

In general, I’m thinking about how to move back to a more personal, controlled-access sort of thing with my faux-blogging. This has been a good place on occasion to get some of my OCD ya-yas out, but it’s still not resulting in anything that is getting read nor I think anyone should read (and more frequently than not, I just end up removing the longer screeds that were posted out of temporary and ALWAYS totally futile anger with the limits of humanity at large; such posts are thusly questionable therapy absolute-best-case).

LiveJournal is still very much my model for what both personal blogging and social networking should be, but I guess this just means that I’m old.

ps – I haven’t forgotten about trackers. I have a few more words about that coming soon, at long last.

Top-of-2013 lists are coming in, as always, and making me feel more than ever that the world hears with ears very different from mine. I listened to that Chvrches album a couple times this year and scratched my head at all the hype, since it just seemed like a pedestrian, not-even-particularly-convincing retro-80s effort from end to end. The Arctic Monkeys album on “everyone’s” list was much more boring still (Squeeze at their least enthusiastic meets Nickelback, anyone?); Arcade Fire can go back in time to 2004 and fuck themselves with particularly dull and pretentious swords; etc.

So, without any attempt at ranking, here are some things I thought were worthy of re-mentioning as things that were released in 2013 and should probably be remembered longer than that. Some of them may even be things you haven’t heard of, particularly if you make a habit of ignoring my Twitter output, which is probably wise. note: this not-really-a-best-of list was courtesy the top of my head; I reserve the right to amend, if I think of anything else I’ll post again.

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I’ve been a big fan of Spotify since it came out in the States in July ’11. I’ve been a paid subscriber almost since day one, and it’s changed the way I listen to music just about as much as MP3 tech did fifteen years ago. The vast majority of my music listening is done on Spotify now, particularly in the car. But my enthusiasm for Spotify has been waning recently for several reasons, most of them centered around decreasing usability of its mobile client… and when I heard about its competitor MOG, I thought I’d give it a serious go to see if it could make me happy again.

There aren’t many (actually, any) truly useful or detailed comparative reviews of these two services out there, and since signing up for either one on a mobile device requires taking the serious step of handing over your credit card, I figured maybe someone ought to take this task seriously. Thusly, the following are my typically detail-oriented conclusions in comparing these two services, because I am the world’s biggest proponent of outlining first-world problems.
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(Edit cleanup 3.19.13: Lengthy meanderings on the joys of alternate guitar tunings after the break.)
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My favorite records of the year (sadly, no real new / magical discoveries):
Micachu and the Shapes (w/ London Sinfonietta), Chopped and Screwed
Craig Wedren, Wand
Deerhoof, Vs. Evil
Sloan, The Double Cross
Real Estate, Days
Chad VanGaalen, Diaper Island
Battles, Gloss Drop
Tim Heidecker, CAINTHOLOGY: Songs in the Key of Cain

Records that were better than I might reasonably expect:
Drake, Take Care
Burzum, Fallen
The AWOLNation thing
The Homefront – Songs for the Resistance soundtrack (the latter half is way better than the first, though)
The new Primus record actually wasn’t bad, but don’t ask me how I know

Records I still need to get around to from 2011:
New Tom Waits
Giles Corey s/t
Probably the Jay-Z / Kanye thing at some point, but meh.
And about five dozen others I probably read about, got excited about, and forgot about.
Hey, there was a new Bill Callahan in there somewhere, I think?
I should probably also finish a whole Tyler the Creator-related record someday before he’s totally irrelevant.
And I also asked for the Weird Al live Bluray for Xmas, but didn’t get it. So.

Big disappointments:
Heidecker and Wood, Starting from Nowhere (not that it will stop me from idolizing either of these two fine gentlemen)
Low, C’mon (apt title, that)
I finally got around to listening to Bon Iver. Yeah, no.
And who the fuck are all these people who think Adele is omg so awesome? She’s like one notch more musically interesting than Susan Boyle. I’m not sure who is worse– them, or the Bon Iver people.

Resolutions for myself:
Make a helluva lot more music, and make it a helluva lot better this time, punk.
Learn to code so you can make cool music stuff, y’doofus.
Finally learn the frickin’ pedal steel; also, the fiddle (note: NOT the violin).
Learn about alternative vocations that are actually useful to society at large.

Proposed resolutions for the record industry, of which I am not really a part, but it’s always nice to dream:
Let’s get back to not mastering everything to 0dB every time, all the time.
Let’s also stop rehashing everything that’s ever been done ever with a fresh, proud coat of Autotune on top.
Also, please die a horrible, horrible death.
(note: I have also made these same three proposed resolutions every year since roughly 1999)

Things I look forward to in 2012:
Not a whole lot, honestly.

Happy strictly-arbitrary new calendar year! May our truly chaotic universe with its strictly-arbitrary economy and ultimately meaningless existence find you all well, or at least believing that you are well. Comfortable self-delusion is a great gig if you can land it.