I’d say eighty-five percent of conversations I’ve had with people who live in Portland either start, or turn into, something like this:

Me: So I’m thinking about getting something to eat…
Person: Oh yeah?  Where are you going?
Me: I dunno, I was thinking East Burn?
Person: OH. MY. GOD. THAT PLACE IS SO. GOOD.
Me: Uh, yeah, it’s pretty tasty.

Or:

Me: So I’m thinking about getting something to eat…
Person: Have you ever been to Mama Mia?
Me: Mama Mia? Nope.
Person: OH. MY. GOD. IT IS SO. GOOD.
Me: Oh yeah?

Or:

Person: Have you tried the new Rogue ale?
Me: Nope. Let me guess, is it good?
Person: OH. MY. GOD. IT IS … SOGOOD.

Or:

Me: I’m thinking about heading to Powells to–
Person: OH MY GOD, I. LOVE. POWELLS.
Me: Yeah, everyone does, it’s–
Person: IT’S A BLOCK OF BOOKS.
Me: I know.
Person: SO. GOOD.

Or:

Me: Have you heard of this band?
Person: SO. GOOD.

Or:

Person: We should go to Ground Kontrol tonight. THAT PLACE IS SO. AWESOME.

Or:

Me: Have you been–
Person: SO. GOOD.
Me: I haven’t even said–
Person: AWESOME, THEIR SUSHI IS TO. DIE. FOR.
Me: It’s not sushi!
Person: I GOTTA GO.

Or:

Me: Have you been to that baby-strangling place?
Person: OH. MY. GOD. BEST BABY STRANGLING PLACE EVER.

My point being — the city is apparently the best place ever, but the people are a little two-dimensional.  When you ask people what they do for a living, they say something like, “I’m a vegan” or “I have tattoos.”  They pierce their septum or wear bright neon spandex or ride bicycles everywhere.  They read Nietzsche and Marx and quote them in an attempt to seem cool, but when you try to have a conversation with them it all falls into mush.  They love pop culture “ironically” (read: they really just love pop culture), and they like bands so obscure they probably just made them up on the spot.

I always thought that I wanted to be a part of the hipster community, but now that I see it face-to-face, I really, really don’t.

Giving away music on the internet is hard.  Not as difficult as, say, selling it online, but still pretty hard.  The reason is because technology hasn’t yet caught up to ideal intuitiveness.  We’re getting there.  Really close, actually. But we’re still burdened by middleman steps.  Namely, .zip files, downloads, searches.

There needs to be a universal program¹ that easily allows someone to grab your music and listen to it immediately.  Now you say, “Josh, that already exists, it’s called streaming.”  And I reply: streaming sucks.  Ideally.  Pragmatically, it’s a great way to instantly listen to music, but what if you want to put the track on your computer?  Especially if it’s a free track?  This isn’t too hard, you just download and click on .. you know what, I’m confusing myself with this worthless preamble.  Let’s just get on with my idea.

A music bin. Which exists maybe on the toolbar, since toolbars are pretty universal.  When you come across a website that has music that you can download, all you have to do is click and drag the music link up to the toolbar, and it “dumps” the song into the bin². The song gets downloaded and immediately updated in your music program of choice (iTunes, Winamp, WMP, whatever [or maybe all three]). Maybe it has a setting where the song is played immediately. Either way, you have downloaded the song and don’t have to worry about finding it in your computer, transferring it, or really messing with it at all.

Now (and this is why I thought this up), if a person is offering a free ALBUM, or EP, they ususally send it as a .zip file.  This music bin program would unzip the file, extract the files to place in whatever folder you deem worthy, and updates your music program. This is important because it eliminates the stupid step of opening Windows Explorer, opening the .zip file, C&Ping the tracks, moving them to your folder, etc etc.

… wait a minute.  I just described a torrent file. Good god I’m an idiot.

First of all, let me apologize profusely for not updating this in a month.  I’ve been busy with work and haven’t really been exciting enough to warrant a blog update.  I get up in the morning, go to work all day, come home and play Oblivion all night.  Or work on Steve’s website¹.  Or generally just dawdle about until it was time for sleep.

The truth is, I’ve gotten a bit lazy over the past few months.  My job is ultimately boring and lacks any sort of energy.  I sit and push papers all day.  In a chair.  All day.  Thus, I’ve gotten fat.  And secluded.  I find myself spending a lot of time alone.  Don’t get me wrong, I like being alone, but after a while it gets grating.  Like walking down the waterfront.  Nobody walks down the waterfront alone.  You stick out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, my friends Missy and Nick came down from Tacoma for the weekend, because it’s Missy’s birthday², and I, much like Newton’s first law of motion, found myself at rest and unable to put myself into motion.  This happens a lot.  Fortunately, it was Missy’s birthday, and that was the external force needed to get me off my ass and out for the weekend.

And it turned out kind of neat.

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SPOILERS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SPOILERS

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I won’t lie: I google myself.  A lot.  Usually in the dark with a glass of merlot.  Without pants on.

What’s cool about my name is that it’s very difficult for people to remember how to spell.  Most people desperately want to spell my last name “Bellville”, but that’s just not how it’s spelled.  My name is spelled Belville and there’s just no way that’s going to change.  I don’t like the Bellville spelling.  It seems off somehow.  Belleville is better but I’m just not that French.  And so I have my bastardized surname of Belville, which is also a line of Lego toys for girls, if you didn’t know that already.

I bring this up because if you google “Josh Belville”, this website is the first result.  More importantly, the first page is all me: Myspace, Facebook, last.fm, thesixtyone, even burn out sites like The Next Big Sound and LinkedIn.  It’s all me.  Whoa, I even make the whole second page!  And the third page!  And the fourth!

Even if you don’t put quotes in Google when you search my name, it still is all me.  If you search “joshua belville”, the first site that pops up is my acting/music website.  Point being not so much that I have mastered the art of SEO, but more that I have just the right amount of Unusual to my name.

Unfortunately that means bunk if you don’t know how to spell it.

If you search “zornog”, with the notable exception of King Zornog from the Star Wars comic books¹, it’s all me for the first page.  And the second.

So the question becomes: how important is this?  How important is it to be so integrated into Google when no one knows how to properly spell your name?  Should I add “bellville” into my meta tags so that people can essentially misspell my name and still get to my website?  Actually … that’s probably a good idea.  But the point is, should anyone wish to find me through the internet, their chances of doing so are Extremely High, but only if they spell my name correctly.

Alternately, they could search for “zornog” and effectively find me.

… In other words, I’m doomed.