babysleep I just put the baby to sleep. We were listening to Radiohead’s OK Computer, and he fell asleep at track 7: Fitter Happier. There’s some interesting stuff about what babies fall asleep to. They are known to love white noise, the sounds of vacuums and hairdryers, which is why you’ll find videos like “vacuum cleaner sounds for babies” on youtube with 20 million views. Oh, and just to throw this in here– The Happy Song by Imogen Heap tends to calm crying babies very quickly. They literally tested and made it in a lab.

On OK Computer – I first encountered Radiohead when I was 13 years old, thanks to a very cool English teacher, Mr. James Koh, who used the videos for Street Spirit and Just and No Surprises as texts for us to analyze. 2003 was the post-Napster era of Kazaa, Limewire, Soulseek and so on. There wasn’t YouTube yet. YouTube is one of the most magical things about the internet and we just take it for granted. you can listen to ~any song you want in seconds. wanna learn guitar? cooking? yoga? how to change a doorknob, unclog a toilet? someone will teach u. interviews. documentaries. all of it free and available instantly. As I write this I’m now remembering that the first time I heard Creep was a really emotional experience for me

I used to use quotes from radiohead everywhere, all over my blogs and websites, my screen name on MSN messenger. “this machine will not communicate”

cash converters. pawn shop. many copies of titanic souundtrack. pawn shops

discman

CDs

it’s probably the album that i’ve listened to in full the most number of times.

what would my ok computer be?

To paraphrase T. S. Eliot’s verdict on “Ulysses,” it’s the album that made the modern world possible for alternative rock. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/radioheads-ok-computer-turns-twenty-five 

what’s a series of essays I could write – maybe that’s tnoo constrained a form, what’s an album, what’s something I could do… that makes the modern world possible for 

doin a little nerd spelunking about TS Elliot and James Joyce – they were introduced by their mutual Ezra Pound, who deserves his own thread for his extensive switchboarding (he knew everyone from HG Wells to Yeats to Marshall McLuhan… andd… he was a nazi sympathizer -_-“)