About twenty years ago I decided to post a chart of my hundred favorite songs.  In the 1990s I would have had to update such a chart every week⁠—every time a new episode of 120 Minutes came on I’d have a bunch of new songs to add.  In the 21st century, though, updates have been called for much less frequently⁠—every couple of years or so.  And in the 2020s, the only changes I have made have been to add Poppy songs.  The effect has been pretty dramatic, though, because I’ve added a lot of Poppy songs.  A couple have even landed in my topmost tier.  Each time I have had to ask, is this my new #1?  And so far, the answer has been, no, not quite.  I guess this isn’t too surprising, since the answer to that question has only been “yes” twice in my entire life.  I didn’t really have a single favorite song as a kid; I started following music when I was nine, back in 1983, and soon knew every song in the Top 40, thanks to MTV and the Mighty 690⁠—and I liked most of them.  But as the early ’80s gave way to the late ’80s, I liked fewer and fewer of the songs I heard.  By the time I started my junior year of high school in 1988, I wasn’t listening to any music at all.  But The Wonder Years got me interested in the music of the ’60s, and in 1989 I became a full-fledged Beatlemaniac and anointed “A Day in the Life” as my favorite song of all time.  That lasted for a couple of years.  But in 1991, a new genera­tion of music hit the airwaves: my generation’s music, start­ing with Nirvana.  “Smells Like Teen Spirit” became my new favorite song pretty much immediately, and it would remain so for the rest of the 1990s⁠—and the 2000s.  Then Pandora fed me a song by a band from Toronto called Die Mannequin.

That song was called “Fatherpunk”, and as of this writing, that song sits at #24 on my chart⁠—a lofty position, but quite a way from #1.  However, it was good enough that, after a few more clicks to sample some of their other music, I deci­ded to buy everything Die Mannequin had released.  That wasn’t much.  They’d released a couple of four-song EPs, collected with a couple of demos onto a CD called Unicorn Steak, and they’d just released their first real album, Fino + Bleed.  That album concluded with a song called “Open Season”.  I wrote an article about “Open Season” a long time ago⁠—long enough ago that you could listen to the song via an embedded Shockwave player.  In the article, I described it as “the first song in eighteen years to threaten to knock ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ off the top of my personal hit parade”, which it did eventually do.  I lamented that it was too bad that frontwoman Care Failure had been born so late, because had Fino + Bleed come out in 1994 rather than 2009, “Die Mannequin would’ve gone straight into the Buzz Bin, Care Failure would have become a massive star, and I wouldn't have needed to piggyback upon decades of DARPA research and development in order to discover” the band, which didn’t even have a U.S. distributor.  Of course, Kurt Cobain was born a generation before Care Failure, his band did go straight into the Buzz Bin, and he did become a mas­sive star… which, most agree, contributed to his suicide a few short years later.  And so I ended my article about my new favorite song “by pleading with Care Failure, née Caroline Kawa, not to shoot herself in the head.”

Care Failure did not shoot herself in the head.  But she did die last month at the age of 36.  Not many details been re­leased; she wasn’t a big star, was barely even a public figure.  The Kawa family reported that she had died of organ failure brought on by an infection; someone claiming to know her personally said that the infection was cellulitis.  I actually got that at the beginning of 2010.  I randomly woke up look­ing and feeling like I’d been punched in the nose.  I consulted a doctor, who told me that if I took a short course of anti­biotics I would be totally fine and if I did not I might very well die.  So maybe that’s what happened.  Or maybe not.  It doesn’t matter.  Care Failure is dead.  There will be no more Die Mannequin songs.  Though I had already sort of come to terms with that second part: there haven’t been any new Die Mannequin songs since 2014.  In an era when the type of music I like is no longer popular, it does not appear that my favorite musicians can sustain careers.  Jessicka Addams hasn’t put out an album since 2005, and my understanding is that she has declared herself officially retired from music.  Julie Christmas hasn’t released any new music of her own since 2012.  But where there’s life, there’s hope.  Jessicka’s band Scarling did release a final single in 2013, and people un-retire all the time.  Julie Christmas contributed vocals to a Cult of Luna album in 2016, and played a couple of shows over the past two months after six years away from the stage.  But Care Failure ran out of time.

I encourage you to head over to my chart and listen to some of the Die Mannequin songs linked from there.  Even follow­ing the recent Poppification of the chart, it looks like Die Mannequin has eight songs in the top 100, and you can find five more by pulling up the pop-up band bio.  The link is easy to find.  Scroll down to the chart.  Click on the number 1.

AI is one of the hottest topics these days, and I was annoyed to find that so many of the articles about Care Failure’s death were clearly computer-generated.  “We are attempting to get in touch with Care Failure to learn more about the circumstances surrounding her untimely demise.”  Cool!  I’ve always wanted to see ChatGPT conduct a séance.

Then there was this, which reminded me of the student who thought he could avoid plagiarism detection by running Sparknotes through a synonym generator: “Members of the family request that no one squander money on flowers.”

Working a standard Monday-to-Friday job for a few years there rewired my brain a bit.  When I finish work on Friday, I always feel a surge of relief: “Hooray! The weekend’s finally here!”  Except in my current job, Saturday is usually my heaviest work day…!

For years people have complained about how hard it is these days to escape automated menus and get a human on the phone.  I had some problems with an Amazon return, and for the life of me I couldn’t find the promised links to talk with a live representative.  Eventually I found the issue: every auto­mated option was given in text, but talking to a human was the one link that was provided via an icon only.  Sneaky!

The Simpsons is still on the air, heading into its 35th sea­son.  The Internet abounds with Simpsons references, as does everyday conversation.  It recently occurred to me that I’ve never heard a Simpsons reference I didn’t recognize.  I stopped watching the show around 1998.

Normally I fly Southwest, which doesn’t really divide pas­sengers up into different classes, but a while back I flew a different airline that did: it had first class, premium class, and then the main cabin.  I glanced at the information card that listed the available beverages and saw that your class even dictated what kind of water you got: first and premium class got Dasani, while the main cabin got regular, generic water.

Except then I looked at it more closely and discovered that I’d been reading it backwards.  It was actually Dasani for premium class and the main cabin, while the regular water went to the first-class passengers.  There were paying top rates for the privilege of not drinking Dasani.