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You know the rules: Shuffle your entire music collection, click Play, and report the first 10 tracks, no matter what (following Thomas Hawk’s lead, I expanded the list to 20 tracks). This week’s list is formatted as artist, song title, and album (in italics):

1. Fool to Think, Dave Matthews, Everyday
2. You Got My Letter, Boz Scaggs, Some Change
3. Hungry Heart, Bruce Springsteen, The River Disc 1
4. Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart, The Coasters, Elemental R&B (compilation)
5. Sullivan Street, Counting Crows, Across A Wire: Live in New York City
6. Listening to Old Voices, John Hiatt, Stolen Moments
7. Teenage Warrior, Little Feat, Representing the Mambo
8. Jack Straw, The Grateful Dead, Live at Kezar Stadium 26-May-1973
9. Hanky Panky, k.d. lang, A Truly Western Experience
10. How Much I’ve Lied, Gram Parsons, G.P./Grievous Angel
11. The Wicked Messenger, Bob Dylan, Live in Brussels 12-Nov-2003
12. If I Could Put Them All Together (I’d Have You), Elvis Costello, Almost Blue (Expanded, Disc 2)
13. Doly, Les Quatre Etoiles, Sangonini
14. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Van Morrison and Junior Wells, A Night in San Francisco, Disc 1
15. Claudette, Roy Orbison and Friends, Black and White Night
16. Deacon Blues, Steely Dan, Citizen Steely Dan Disc 4
17. Funkytano, Will and Lobo, Siete
18. Angel Dance, Los Lobos, The Neighborhood
19. Blue Moon of Kentucky, John Fogerty, Big Mon: Songs of Bill Monroe
20. 2000 Miles, The Pretenders, The Singles

Why does this list make me think of that great line from the waitress at Bob’s Country Bunker in The Blue Brothers? “We’ve got both kinds of music here: Country and Western!”

(Special bonus track: 21. Black Snake Blues, Clifton Chenier, 60 Minutes with the King of Zydeco)

Next Tuesday I leave for nearly three weeks of much-needed vacation in Italy. Although I’ll have a computer with me, I won’t be online much, and I’ll be thinking more about 16th Century Italian art and the best Brunello di Montalcino than Windows or Longhorn.

I plan to load up the site with a new tip that will get posted automatically every day, and maybe I’ll post a picture or two along the way.

Turns out I’m not the only one who thinks that “the Apple way” is right out of the old Soviet playbook. In fact, I’m in some fairly distinguished company.

Lawrence Lessig, 1999: “Apple’s response to free speech would make Stalin proud”:

[O]n an Apple-hosted forum … an Apple employee posted a schoolmarmish missive: Apple never promised upgradeability, the employee astutely observed, warning that “additional posts to the thread will be removed, and since the entire thread is off-topic, it will most likely be removed as well.” True to the threat, Apple then deleted the unhappy messages — airbrushing the discontent away with an ease that the Soviets would have envied. …

I do find this corporate response to criticism interesting. We live in a “free-speech” world; our national identity is tied to the ideals of the First Amendment. And yet we treat it as obvious that in corporate space, the Bolsheviks rule. We trust free speech where it doesn’t really matter (politics); we banish it where money is the bottom line (business).

Rodney O. Lain, Mac Observer, 2000:

Machiavelli had the right idea: the business world is governed by force, not by virtue. … This is the principle that Apple has always lived by, and kept us coming back for more, in a sick, twisted way. (Think I’m exaggerating? Raise your hand if you love the Mac. Keep your hand raised if you love Apple. I arrest my case.).

I think it was Stalin who stood in front of his men with a live chicken. He then plucked the feathers off that chicken, one by excruciatingly one. When he finished, he then began walking away from the chicken. The dazed chicken amazingly followed Stalin, and even worse, ate out of Stalin’s hands. …

Mark my words. The more successful Apple gets, the crazier Steve will get. It’s a truism. You’ve heard the stories about how an Apple employee can get in the elevator with Steve and find himself fired by the time he reaches ground floor. I’m sure that was when Apple was at its zenith, in all its glory. Also, the converse is true: when Apple reached its nadir, I’m sure Steve was humble, congenial, downright human.

Sam Beckwith, Prague TV, 2005, reviews an exhibit of Soviet art:

The second section, With Lenin For Ever, looks at communism as a pseudo-religion, which means lots of posters of Lenin and Stalin … There’s also an “inspirational” quote from Pravda:

“Should you ever run into difficulties at work, or suddenly doubt your abilities, think of him – of Stalin – and you’ll find the necessary self-confidence. Should you feel tired at a time when a man should not be tired, think of him – of Stalin – and work will become easier. Should you be at a loss as to how you should act, think of him – of Stalin – and your decision will be the right one.”

I intend to apply this to my own life, but substituting Steve Jobs for Stalin.

Heh.

Scoble says: “I think we’re gonna try to get a little blogger thing going on Tuesday night.”

Intel, Gibson Guitar, and Cakewalk are also sponsoring an event at the Experience Music Project Museum on Tuesday night at 9:00. Admission is free with a WinHEC badge. I went to a similar event at EMP last year and it was a blast. Robert, be sure to factor this into your plans.

From today’s WaPo: MIT Prank Paper Accepted for Publication

Three MIT graduate students set out to show what kind of gobbledygook can pass muster at an academic conference these days, writing a computer program that generates fake, nonsensical papers. And sure enough, a Florida conference took the bait.

The program, developed by students Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan Aguayo, generated a paper with the dumbfounding title: “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.” Its introduction begins: “Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred.”

The proposal even included some randomly generated charts and graphs!

Interestingly, their second bogus submission, “The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking,” was turned down. The three students have raised $2000 in contributions toward travel expenses, but alas, the offer to present their paper was rescinded. “We wanted to go down there and give a randomly generated talk,” Stribling said.

I’ve been to conferences where I thought the content of some presentations seemed a little random, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone explicitly create their presentation that way. Heh.

If you like this site, you’ll probably want to read today’s Site of the Day interview at Tim Coyle’s F-Stop Blues. (Don’t let the oddly named permalink fool you.)

If you’ll be at WinHEC in Seattle (April 24-27), leave a comment or send me a note. If there’s enough interest, maybe we can set up a dinner on Sunday night.

Unless, of course, Scoble and Frank Shaw have something else in mind. The S.F. blogger’s dinner was a good idea. Why not do something similar in Seattle?

In honor of April 15, some light reading:

Even NFL players have to pay income tax:

Kendrell Bell, a Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, tells of his great awakening to the verities of income tax: ”I got a million-dollar signing bonus. But then I got the check, and it was only $624,000. I thought, Oh, well, I’ll get the other half later. Then I found out that’s all there was. I thought, They can’t do this to me. Then I got on the Internet and I found out they can.”

Prof. Froomkin says there comes a point where Steve Martin’s tax advice starts to seem attractive:

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!” How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don’t say “I forgot”? Let’s say you’re on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, “I forgot armed robbery was illegal.” Let’s suppose he says back to you, “You have committed a foul crime. you have stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say, ‘I forgot’?” Two simple words: Excuuuuuse me!!”

Alas, he reports, it doesn’t work.

New MexiKen recalls the words of Will Rogers: “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.”

If you’ve run out of ways to procrastinate, try these helpful techniques from sz at World O’Crap:

Well, this year I was going to do them early, so in February I took all of the forms and receipts and stuff from the file where I throw tax stuff, and put everything on the kitchen table, so it would be right there, guilting me about my taxes every time I walked into the kitchen.  And I did feel guilty, and vowed frequently to do taxes the very next day.  However, after a few weeks of this, I had to hurriedly clean the kitchen because company was coming, and I scooped up everything and put it … somewhere. 

I didn’t think about taxes again until yesterday, when I saw some reference to the 15th being tax day and panicked.  So, I watched “CSI” and “Missing” to help me focus.  Then I arranged my calculator, stapler, pencils, and such on the table, and got out the file that’s supposed to contain all my tax stuff — and saw that it was empty.  And then I remembered that I had put everything on the kitchen table, where it had sat for months, until I needed to clean up, and had put it all  … somewhere.

I interrogated all of the usual suspects (drawers, magazine racks, the china cupboard, etc.), taking out their contents and demanding that they show me the tax stuff.  And, in order to send a message to the clutter about the consequences of harboring fugatives, I threw away a bunch of old periodicals, expired coupons, Christmas cards, and requests for donations from my college.  But the missing tax stuff remained hidden.  Finally, in desperation, I tried looking in the hamster/guest/junk room.  And there, under a stack of books, was the tax stuff.

There’s also amusing advice on what to do if you’re a blogger who puts up a tip jar. Not necessarily sound advice, but amusing.

And finally, courtesy of J-Walk, is a link to Presidential Tax Returns. I had no idea that Richard and Patricia Nixon made $73,648.86 in wages, salaries, and tips in 1969.