A few music sites you've probably heard of, but may not have taken advantage of:

1. Last.fm

Last.fm is my most recently-discovered, and current favorite, social networking site. My last.fm profile can be found here. On my profile, you can see everything from my most-played artists of the past seven days, the Beatles and Pendulum, to my most-played artist of all time, Fall Out Boy. Friends can also connect on last.fm and see what each other are listening to and have listened to. You can connect to a friend's or other user's library and listen to their music, or browse through artists and genres and listen to songs that way. Last.fm is a great way to expose yourself to new artists and styles of music that you may like. It is also an interesting catalogue of your own and your friends' music-listening habits. For example, I learned that I need to lay off of Fall Out Boy for a while, because 3,000+ plays is far too many. And I learned that a few of my friends, Catie Vernon and Jordan Fish, have great taste in music and I should listen to their suggestions more often. [As I often find myself listening to their libraries when I am at a loss for a song to play.] Last.fm is a great site for discovering new music and connecting with friends who have similar tastes.

2. Blip.fm

Blip.fm is another site I had heard of for a while, but only just discovered and started using. My blip.fm profile is connected to my Twitter, and whenever I "blip" a new song, it posts as a tweet. To blip a song, you merely search the title and artist, add your own comments, and a link is posted to liste to the song. Blip.fm allows you to "be a DJ" and broadcast your favorite songs for all of your Twitter followers and Blip friends to hear. You can select one song, or create and entire stream of music for listeners to play. Friends can follow your blips, and you can give "props" when you like music that another person has played. I also have my blips set to update on my Facebook, so that my friends can see what I'm listening to and be exposed to new music.

3. Strike Gently

Strike Gently is a pop culture gossip, news, and downloading site that I have often heard about and just recently looked into. SG is famous for their internet drama, as the website often offends both generic pop-punk bands and other music news sites. It's raw, brutal, and occasionally X-rated, so some may take offense... but I prefer to just laugh. Movies and television shows can also be streamed from the Strike Gently site, and many SG posts include links to download songs, albums, movies, or music videos, of course with a disclaimer which explains that such downloads are for promotional purposes only and should be deleted within 24 hours. I've found everything from the newly-leaked Lady Gaga album to a stream of New Moon on this site. I've also discovered new bands such as Ghostland Observatory. It's an interesting website which really enforces the idea of "try before you buy."

I can't believe you take it so serious... seriously.

I'm tired of everyone trying to document everything. I hate Facebook and I hate everyone's desperate need to take a million pictures to put on Facebook.

I wish we could just live in the moment.

Not that I'm not guilty of doing all these things, but I wish I didn't.

Earlier this week, we had a few inches of snow and a lot of ice, so classes were canceled. Now if there is one thing that can motivate college kids to go outside and celebrate, it's a snow day. Everyone slept in until past noon, something which was particularly noticeable when girls were lining up for the shower around one-o-clock, and then got ready to go out in the snow.

And what did everyone have to grab before heading out? Their camera. So we proceeded outside; ten friends, ten cameras, and very little fun. We quickly realized that there was no point in taking pictures... since everyone was taking pictures. The majority of us returned our cameras either to our rooms or our pockets, and the day was fantastic after that.

But the point I'm trying to make in this very random and likely to be deleted blog is that there is no point in trying to record everything... if you aren't even going to be there to experience it in the first place.

One of my favorite bands, Cobra Starship, set up a camera to film them while they wrote their new album in a cabin in Pennsylvania. One night, after hours of work, a few bottles of wine, and a bottle of vodka, they began calling fans. My friend came into my room to inform me of this development and I pulled up the website at once. The first person whom they called after I began watching spent the first five minutes of her conversation telling Gabriel Saporta, the lead singer, to "hold on a sec" while she tried to find her camera and begin recording the conversation.

As I watched, I thought how pathetic she was to be blowing an opportunity to talk to him, but then I realized that I would probably do the same thing. Because otherwise, what would I put online for everyone to see? How would I prove to anyone that he had actually called to talk to me? Our society has become one in which the experiences we have are not as important as the stories and the proof that we had them.

Gabe told the girl on the phone, "Stop trying to record this. You're wasting the whole conversation; just live in the moment," and after she kept ignoring him in favor of a camera, he hung up on her.

Since that night I've been thinking about my life and about all the things I've missed while trying to capture proof of the moment-- while looking for a story to tell. I'm determined to stop wasting my life taking pictures and trying to have something to brag about. I'm just going to enjoy my experiences and live in the moment. Next time I go to a concert or some sort of event, I may take my camera, but it will stay in my pocket for everything except a meet-and-greet. Anyone with me?

Cyber Love?

My goal with this blog is to write an entry every day. That's not so easy, however, because some days I just have nothing to say. A few minutes ago, I was sitting at my computer, trying to think of a blog topic. I was having little success, so I began browsing Facebook; I then came across an add titled "Create Your Mr. Right."

The tagline for this add was, "Why look for Mr. Right when you can make him yourself? Design your Mr. Right now and start your virtual relationship." Now I know that we are supposed to be embracing the virtual era and taking advantage of all that computers have to offer, but to a girl who thought Match.com was weird, the concept of creating a "virtual relationship" is just plain disturbing.

The advertisement goes on to say, "Describe what you like in a guy and get your very own Mr. Right; a virtual boyfriend to keep you cozy on all those lonely nights." Am I the only one who thinks the creator of this website was insane? There can't possibly be a market out there for something like this... Right? It's not as if a cartoon boy, controlled by a computer, can really keep someone cozy on a lonely night... Right? Feel free to disagree with me, but that will probably freak me out.