something occurred to me today

my knowledge of american history is shallower than i'd like, but i'm wondering, now... does anyone here know if the US engaged in the same sort of frantic social regression we seem to be seeing these days (the New Prudery, discussion of whether segregated schools might be good after all, etc.) during previous wars? is this just something people do when they're feeling insecure about their situation in the world, or is it all an evil conspiracy by the Republicans to drag us kicking and screaming back to the stone age?

fun with iTunes

after a couple of afternoons' worth of casually ripping whatever i had on hand in the office, i've got 422 songs in iTunes, ranging both alphabetically and stylistically from Art Tatum to Voodoo Glow Skulls. i suppose i'll rotate out the CDs i've had here and bring in some more. (i've never bothered to rip my CDs at home because it's too tedious. here at work, i have a blazingly fast Xeon dual-processor machine with a gig of RAM, which makes it almost painless.)

i've got it on shuffle play. the segue from a live rendition of Billie Holliday singing "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" into "Yellow Submarine" was a bit jarring. but just now, it went from Boston's "The Journey" (an instrumental intro) into Sinatra's rendition of "Stella by Starlight," and it broke my brane because it worked.

(yes. i have a fairly eclectic CD collection, in the true sense of "eclectic" rather than its current popular usage to mean "indie rock, techno, that Elvis remix, and a copy of The Best of Johnny Cash listened to once and forgotten".)

i suppose i could get used to this. what i'm afraid of is that i will. ain't no way i'm ever buying a computer this slick for home use. anyone know what i can do about iTunes' failure to effectively match volumes across tracks?

(and, as i was just telling naomi_traveller, no one will ever let me DJ their dance party. nor should they, if they value their friends.)