I further learned (through discussion with neighbors) that the physician’s group wanting to buy this facility is not giving up. Victory’s plans to demolish the hospital and build a shopping mall seem to be going nowhere, perhaps because of the national economic downturn.

There’s still that dirty deal Oschner made with Tenet that prevents the site being used for medical purposes for five years. Standard business practice, perhaps, but I say it’s a dirty deal for a community trying to recover from a catastrophe. Still, the clock is ticking on that limitation.

Every time I look at that giant abandoned complex I get angry. My daughter should have been born there, just a few blocks from our house. The flood and the machinations of money-grubbers have conspired against us.

But what really matters is that we don’t have to give up hope for the site yet.

Xy calls it an amulet.

Also, my Mom and Dad are visiting from Indiana. Seems like I haven’t seen them forever.

While I was at the hardware store, apparently, the cops rolled up on the scene. They told Johnny to quit and go home. (Xy reported what happened when I got back.) There’s broken glass all over Craig’s porch.

Just a couple minutes later, there are three kids (all African-American) playing catch on the street in front of our house, each with a mitt.

What makes this even weirder is that the kids around here usually prefer to play with footballs or basketball. I’ve never seen them tossing a baseball before.

Oops. They just bounced it off the roof of our car…

Update: To round out this all-American scene, a short time later another kid showed up and started playing his trumpet. (That’s always struck me as an “only in New Orleans” type thing.) Xy recognized him as Chris, to whom she’d lent her guitar a couple weeks ago. She hadn’t seen Chris or her guitar until now. So she ran out on the street half-dressed and gave him the crazy white lady routine and he promised to bring it back.

We also have to conceal the extensive subterranean dungeon we installed during our renovation. Wouldn’t do for Mom & Dad to wander down there and get lost.

Fortunately most of this work falls on Xy since I have clever means of work avoidance, such as posting to this blog or playing with Persephone.

Now I’ve hit 20,000 tracks in my iTunes library, and I’m drawing a line in the sand. At least temporarily. No more! At least not today.

For me it’s become like a sickness, a disease, an addiction.

Firstwith, let me characterize my collection, which gives some indication of the scope of my problem. I have 20,919 songs in my collection by 7,468 artists in 77 different genres. That’s approximately 61 days of continuous audio. 109 GB of data.

Of these, 4,645 tracks have never even been played. “Put Yo Hood Up” by Lil Jon holds the record; I acquired it in November 2005 and still haven’t played it. At least I know what it sounds like. There’s plenty of stuff here that’s a complete mystery. I don’t know what it is or how I acquired it in the first place.

The first thing most people want to know is, “Where do you get it all?”

1. Our CD collection. Over the years I’ve ripped ‘em all, and we recently boxed them up for storage in the basement.
2. Other people’s CD collections. When I’m over at a friend’s house, I might ask to borrow five of their favorite CDs. I take ‘em home, rip ‘em, return ‘em. I believe this is legal.
3. The library. Kinda like the previous, but the library has a way bigger collection. I check out a stack, rip ‘em and return ‘em. Is this legal? I think it still falls under “fair use.”
4. Music blogs. Not sure what the legality of these are, but they’re one of the best ways to get turned on to new music.
5. Other internet sources. There are lots of archives of free music all over the web. This tends to be weird, fringe or obscure stuff.
6. P2P file-sharing networks. Dubious legality, but these account for a small fraction of the overall collection. However, I recently got a decent BitTorrent client and you can use that thing to download whole discographies. That’s frightening to an addict like me.
7. Purchase. I never used the iTunes Music Store because I didn’t like the DRM restrictions. When Radiohead released their own album online last year, it was the first time I ever paid for a music download. Then I got an Amazon gift certificate from my in-laws and I spent it all on MP3 downloads. Convenient and good quality.

I naïvely thought I’d reach some natural limit of my own interests. I thought I’d discover some artists that I like and then hit some kind of horizon beyond which I wouldn’t care to venture. I didn’t account for the appeal of sheer novelty, or the breadth of my musical taste. I’m still discovering artists and subgenres that I find really compelling. For example, most recently I discovered the incredible band Dead Can Dance.

In the interests of full disclosure, kind of like candidates releasing financial statements, here are charts of my listening activity according to Last.FM and iTunes. (Warning, it’s a very large page. Or you could just check my Last.FM profile.) It should be noted that the extreme prominence in these charts of Nirvana, Foo Fighters, U2 and some others is due to Xy’s influence. Keeping these artists high in the mix does wonders for our domestic tranquility. However, I will take full responsibility for the Blue Öyster Cult.

So anyway. So what? So I enjoy hanging out and listening to music. I also enjoy researching and learning more about new music, expanding my horizons. So what’s the problem?

Well, the sheer maintenance and curatorial work involved with this collection is a bit daunting. I like to have things somewhat orderly, even if I’m the only one who ever sees it. Properly tagged audio makes all sorts of interesting things possible when it comes to programming playlists. But each file has roughly a dozen fields of meta data that need to be filled out, and these rarely are filled out completely when I acquire the file, no matter the source, or worse, they’re filled out improperly. Currently I have 285 tracks for which no artist is listed.

So I do research. Sometimes this leads to interesting philosophical conundrums, such as the concept of genre. But it is time consuming.

And then there’s ratings. iTunes lets you rate each song from one to five stars. But just try rating 20,000 songs and you start to feel like a gerbil on a wheel.

Sometimes I get to feeling like the collection is managing me, rather than the other way around.

So. Resolved. I’m slowing down.

Just as soon as I check out the new Renard Poché album…

Anyway, I’ve been seeing the lovebugs here for the first time over this last week.

They remind me of Vero, Florida, which is where I first saw them and learned about their strange lives. That’s also where a certain young goddess was conceived.

So the lovebugs make me happy.

It’s also butterfly season.

Update: My friend John Clark recommends:

If you are looking for ways to send aid to storm victims in Burma I suggest that you consider the program of the Foundation for the People of Burma, which has been doing grassroots work there for a number of years. Information on donating to their aid program can be found at:

http://www.foundationburma.org/may-cyclone-message.php

Information on the work of the Foundation can be found at:

http://www.foundationburma.org/aboutus.php

I’ve posted the pix as a set on Flickr. I recommend viewing it as a slideshow.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School, 3700 Tall Pines Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana 70131

(For the record, we never go, unless someone gives us free tix, and this year no one has, so we’ve been celebrating our own private Jazzfest at home — every day — rain or shine.)

Tonite Tony L. stopped by our house after Jazzfest. He’s back home in New Orleans for a few days, after having moved to Seattle about a year ago. Of course he kind of misses New Orleans. We stayed up all night drinking, smoking, eating, talking.

Reminds me of a night almost three years ago exactly. Except this time I stayed home, with the baby and all, but the vibe remains the same.