- Agent Smith, pre-Matrix.
a playlist : ringtones for people who hate ringtones
click here or on the image below to listen
Bear with me for a bit and let's talk about numbers. I was happily ambling about the internet the other day when I came upon this highly disturbing bit of news: According to soothsayers, mobile phone users will spend about $6.65 billion in ringtone downloads by the year 2012. Assuming that by then there will have been at least 3.3 billion people with cellphones, and that the price of ringtones remains at about a dollar each, then that amounts to at least two ringtones for every mobile phone in existence. That means there's going to be an awfully good chance that every phone that rings in the future will do so to the sound of music. But that's just the half of it. According to misfortune tellers, ringback tones will be more popular than ringtones within just a couple of years. That means instead of hearing the familiar ring when you're calling someone else's phone, you will instead be hearing a song that that person has chosen. So what kind of music will we be hearing more of – against our will – on the streets, in restaurants, in public transport, and even on our own phones in the near future? Check Billboard's Hot Ringtones chart for a hint.Now I don't really care what songs they are. Putting it mildly, I'm not very fond of ringtones. All of them. I think ringtones are one of the most stupid, useless inventions ever, way up there in the ignominious company of electric candles, umbrella hats and superhero capes (except Batman, who isn't superhuman, so he needs it). People have taken to ringtones to publicly announce what cool individuals they are or how much sense of humor they have. Well let me tell you something, Mr. Bleeding Love, your ringtone sucks, and when you pretend to be embarrassed when your phone rings and you fumble as if you can't find it just so the song plays a bit longer, what you're actually saying is, "Ooh, look at me, I'm an attention whore!" Fucking twat. "Apologize" is for pole dancing, not for moviehouses. "Shake It" and "Pork and Beans" are for frathouse pukefests, not for supermarket aisles. "Viva la Vida" is for driving yourself into a cliff, not for hospital waiting areas. And you should all be reminded that a blaring rendition of "Beautiful Girls" in an ATM line is an abuse of airspace rights, tantamount to assault. One day, someone will Taser your ass in revenge and I'll be cheering them, bro.
Of course, I and the rest of us ringtone non-fans know that this rant is a futile exercise in rational bitchin', as there apparently is no shortage of retards who will fork 99 cents for the cheapest badge of individuality they can buy. But if there's one lesson we the people should all have learned from Hillary!, it is to never give up and to keep rolling on. We have within our means a number of ways to keep the fight for a sane, noise-free environment, and as responsible urban citizens, we must assert our rights and do any of the following:
- Write for your congressman to legislate a total ban on ringtones. That way, we can litigate ringtone users to death and make their lives as miserable as they've made ours. Punishment for the guilty will vary. End-users will be isolated in a jail facility with a sound system playing "Buy U a Drank" on repeat 24/7, while ringtone manufacturers (including iTunes – I worship you, Steve, but please take them off the store and sack your adviser who told you that selling them was a good idea) will be hung, drawn and quartered twice over.
- Ask Dean Kamen, the inventor of Segway, to invent a ringtone-blocking device that city planners can install in public areas, defined as any amount of space with a population density of more than one person per square
metermile. We don't really want to be thought of as being overly selfish, so this seems like a reasonable compromise to me. - With the economy in a rut, the government could surely use some money. In these trying times, imposing a 1,000,000% tax on ringtone purchases is truly a win-win situation and a genius idea whose time has come. Lobby it.
- Start a grassroots organization and initiate a "World No Ringtone Day". Spread the word through text messages simply saying, "Today is a good day to respect the right of others to not be violated by your insensitive ringtone. Please set your mobile phone on vibrate and shove it up a nice, warm place within your reach, if you know what I mean."
- And now for the fun part – beat ringtone users at their own game. Tell them how much their ringtones are the pig's ass by using one that will call their attention and slap their faces silly. Make it hard, make it punchy, make it as in-your-face as possible – anything with an angry riff, a cascade of drumming, or lyrics that will feed on their paranoia, because more often that not, these ringtone retards are right-wing Snapple drinkers who believe that terrorists are contaminating their bottled-water sources and so they try to seek comfort wherever they can, including their cell phones. Therefore, I humbly propose the following songs:
- Human Fly : The Cramps
- Black Betty : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
- Heartbreak Hotel : John Cale
- Shake Your Rump : Beastie Boys
- Pay to Play : Nirvana
- Suicide Blonde : INXS
- It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) : R.E.M.
- Psycho Man : Black Sabbath
- Man in the Box : Alice in Chains
- Rebel Yell : Billy Idol
- Space Oddity : David Bowie
- Kashmir : Led Zeppelin
Will you forgive me for doing this? When I started making my two Best of 2007 mixes last December, it struck me as a good idea to revisit 2006 and revise my list of 20 songs I had uploaded as the best of the year. I always felt it rather incomplete, and truth be told, I put very little thought into it. Beth Orton's Safe in Your Arms, for example, was a cursory addition. I was simply recognizing her effort to release a new album, even though it was wholly underwhelming. The idea of a creating new compilation excited me, even though I knew it wasn't going to be too difficult, since I already knew my favorites. The only challenge was whittling them down to 34 and trying to see how to best group them in two. Thirty-four is not a number I picked for the sake of being random. I make these mix tapes (...because "mix CDs" just doesn't roll well off the tongue...) with the intention of sharing and sending them to friends, and 17 just happens to be the average number of songs I can burn in a normal CD. Double the fun, 
Not to let a good year in music pass this blog by, I'm making a last ditch effort to resuscitate it after being long out of commission due to a technical glitch. Nothing serious; my iMac just decided one day to, you know, die, and this trusty PowerBook didn't have the program that lets me stream songs in Flash format, until recently. I'm still going to get a new computer; the act has just been delayed, first because of the wait for Leopard, and now for whatever upgrade comes after Macworld next month. I'm also torn between a new 24-inch iMac and a 17-inch MacBook Pro, but enough of the tedious stuff. I'm back on track, and since it's the end of the year, I thought I'd make the second of what will hopefully be my annual list of the year's best songs.
