Life is weird. That's all I have to say. Life is freakin' weird. Especially when you observe it through the kaleidoscope that is The Internet.

Slashdot basically put a full nelson on the BBC's download bandwidth today. Why? Was it a whole mess of Dr. Who episodes for download? Hitchhiker's Guide radio show episodes for streaming? No, it was an article about how BBC's all-classical Radio 3 had offered five of Beethoven's symphonies for mp3 download. The stereotype of the typical Slashdotter is that of a guy who listens to techno remixes and This Week in Tech on his Neuros Hard Drive media player while "leveling up" in some massively multi-player role playing game. Hardly the audience for classical music. Well, for good or for ill they are becoming an audience for classical now.

The files are available in other corners of the Internet now, including one of my favorite sites of all time, Archive.Org. If you search on Beethoven you will find almost all the files, plus as an added bonus a whole bunch of Camper Van Beethoven concerts from etree. But I suppose it's best to get them direct from the source, if only so Auntie Beeb will know just how many people are interested in this in the future.

The Slashdot thread about this subject has to be the one I have participated in the most in a long while. The thread was very handy for finding alternate places to snarf the files from, and I would report back as to how well or badly I was doing with them. As a response to a person who was bellyaching about the lack of quality, I wrote:

These are perfect for my cheap-ass MP3 CD player, which will hard lock (pull the batteries!) if given an MP3 file it doesn't like.

This will be a nice companion for my trip to San Diego Comic-Con. ^_^ BTW the mp3music.bz site is holding up quite well to my 133c|-|1|\|6. Goddess bless DSL Extreme...my bandwith is rocking hard too.
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Welcome to Planet Baka. Enjoy your stay.

Anyway, the leetspeak is meant as sarcasm, and the rest? Well, it's just me being myself.

Some guy going by the nick of Blakey Rat had to comment about my post...here's his comment in its entirety...

Ok, between the trip to the Comic Con, the Japanese smiley, the 1337-speke, the "Goddess bless", the "Planet Baka" sig, and owning a buggy MP3 player that barely works because it's cheap-ass...

I have to say that that post is the geekiest thing I've ever read in my life by far. I don't know whether to congratulate you, or curl into a ball and cry.
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- There is absolutely nothing in my journal [slashdot.org]

Well, I don't know anyone else who has a nickname that is a direct warning about who and what you are dealing with. Yes, I'm geeky...I'm Ms. Geek, dammit! (You have to imagine that line said by Eddie Murphy in a Gumby suit.) I've had this nickname since Goddess only knows when. Yes I'm a geek, nerd, Otaku, dweeb, Poindexter, "professor," whatever else you want to call me. Yeah, I'm going to Comic-Con, and I will be freakin' BLOGGING about it! Damn right I'm a geek. I wear it proudly.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago the Vice-President of the Heritage Foundation, an ultra-Right Wing thinktank, got into a road rage dustup with a 105-pounds-soaking-wet ex-Ballet Dancer turned "communications assistant" on a bike. The guy is ex-Navy and huge. He got out of his SUV and shoved her off her bike and onto the ground. Can you say "big fat bully?" Can you say "big fat lawsuit?" I knew you could.

Here's the DailyKOS discussion of the affair. There's a link to a Washington Post story on it. I'd link myself but they require evil brain-sucking registration, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Anyway, I have a date with a husband and a Scrabble board, so I want to get done with this. Have a nice Sunday. I suspect I will be blogging tomorrow. I have some things to say about patriotism and the idea of "my country, right or wrong."