Tuesday, April 15, 2003 BRIAN ENO Brian Eno says that we will one day have automatically generated music that will run like water; constantly changing, fractal, interesting and beautiful and refreshing, and that we will wonder why we ever wanted to listen to the same performance, the same record, over and over again. But we at Mango Pudding Blues think that’s hogwash, with all due respect. We would like to point out to Mr. Eno that from the second mankind developed the ability to record, we have eagerly, breathlessly, assertively demanded to hear the same thing over and over again. Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton and Eric Satie and Stravinsky and Carl Perkins and the Andrews Sisters and Serge Gainsbourg and Abba and Peter Tosh and Bobby Short and Mel Torme and Robert Johnson and Johnny Cash and the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys and Pablo Casals and Marvin Gaye and Milton Nascimento and the Velvet Underground. * * * Monday, April 14, 2003 DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Mostly, here at Mango Pudding Blues, we sleep the sleep of deeply decent peaceful people. But sometimes, when we can’t sleep, we bow to hoary tradition and count sheep. We envision a vast glade bisected by a perfect picket fence with sheep leaping from left to right at even intervals. But we are troubled by the sheep. We wonder, why do they leap? And how is it they would leap in so orderly a fashion? No, we need shepherds to shoo the sheep through chutes equipped with laser-triggered counting devices that trip big LED readouts inside the barn. Sheep shooed through chutes. For meat? No, too cruel. For wool! Shepherds would shoo the sheep through chutes to be sheared to make slick suits. Free-range organic wool suits, which would sell millions in France and Italy. Yes! And so we count our sheep instead on our Blackberry-enabled handheld wireless devices while cutting through Manhattan in town cars with cigars, watching the Mango Pudding Cruelty-Free Organic Fabric Corporation grow and grow and grow. * * *