I have just finished Sea­son 3 of my 9 sea­son X-files marathon that I star­ted in August. Hallo­ween seems an appro­priate day to do this and to also post this clas­sic introduction. 

With the power to appease the cons­cience comes the abi­lity to remove free­dom — Talitha Cumi.

Though if I am going to begin quo­ting epi­so­des I am going to have to men­tion the best of Sea­son 3, War of the Coprophages:

Mul­der: I think you’d bet­ter get up here.
Scully: What hap­pe­ned?
Mul­der: It appears that coc­kroaches are mor­tally attac­king peo­ple.
Scully: I’m not going to ask you if you just said what I think you just said, because I know it’s what you just said.

Mul­der: Bambi also has a theory I’ve come to acro…
Scully: Who?
Mul­der: Dr. Beren­baum. Any­way her theory is…
Scully: Her name is Bambi?
Mul­der: Yeah. Both her parents were natu­ra­lists. Her theory is that UFO’s are actually noc­tur­nal insect swarms pas­sing through elec­tri­cal air fields.
Scully: Her name is Bambi?

Woman why won’t you just shut up? Ain’t you never gonna stop tal­king? I will bless the day that I can get away from your voice, your voice, your voice. From Calloway’s Cot­ton Club 1933–1934 comes “Your Voice”:

Where Is Minnie?

The [Uni­ted State’s] free­doms are under assault by an admi­nis­tra­tion whose poli­cies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s “mar­ket­place of ideas” is being poi­so­ned, by a pro­pa­ganda com­pany so bla­tant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.

Nonethe­less… the head­line is this: Bill Clin­ton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spo­ken the truth about 9/11, and the current pre­si­den­tial administration. 

• The Bush Admi­nis­tra­tion did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11. 
• The Bush Admi­nis­tra­tion igno­red all the evi­dence gathe­red by its predecessors. 
• The Bush Admi­nis­tra­tion did not unders­tand the Daily Brie­fing entit­led “Bin Laden Deter­mi­ned To Strike in U.S.” 
• The Bush Admi­nis­tra­tion… did…not…try.

Moreo­ver, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current admi­nis­tra­tion, and in par­ti­cu­lar the Pre­si­dent, has been given the grea­test “pass” for incom­pe­tence and mal­fea­sance, in Ame­ri­can history!

[…]

To hear [Bush] bleat and whine and bully at nearly every oppor­tu­nity, one would think someone else had been Pre­si­dent on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that pre­ce­ded it. That hardly reflects the honesty nor man­li­ness we expect of the Executive.

I also find Olbermann’s com­men­tary on the Katrina fiasco last year refreshing:

I am per­so­nally not the big­gest of Bolly­wood fans but I find myself stran­gely drawn towards these clas­sic pie­ces with their obs­cure and engros­sing dance num­bers, their stran­gely pro­mi­nent lead sin­gers (with enor­mous nos­trils) and the rhyth­mi­cal grainy soundtrack:

Dil Deke Dekho

Eena Meena Deeka

Given my new found web space and band­width capa­bi­li­ties I have deci­ded to turn the music sec­tion of this blog from a sim­ple “review and list” pos­ting of my favou­rite albums to a fully fled­ged mp3 blog with inline flash strea­med mp3s and music videos via You­Tube. My ins­pi­ra­tion for doing this comes from the well ver­sed Spi­ked Candy for which I am a regu­lar reader.

Howe­ver the “Radio Blog” flash script used there seems too cum­ber­some for my liking, so I searched around for an alter­na­tive flash strea­ming audio pla­yer. I found two options — both by Jeroen Wije­ring, the first was very simi­lar to Radio Blog, it has a list of songs and you can choose to play them; whilst very nice and highly cus­to­mi­za­ble it did not suit a post by post situa­tion. So I opted for the second, a con­cise pro­gress bar which allows colour and size mani­pu­la­tion (but has no text dis­play), per­fect for my needs.

To check out this neat little script I sug­gest rea­ding the latest posts in the Audio / MP3 blog sec­tion, I have put up three posts so far inc­lu­ding Lulu Jackson’s pre-war blues rarity “You’re going to leave the old home Jim” and a video of Moham­med Rafi’s “Jaan Pechechaan Ho” per­for­med for the Bolly­wood film Gum­naam.

My satis­fac­tion with this script has also lead me to inte­grate it into the forums so that any direct link to a file with mp3 exten­sion is par­sed to gene­rate an inline pla­ya­ble ver­sion and an option to down­load the track. This modi­fi­ca­tion is amongst the many I have added lately, inc­lu­ding the abi­lity to post You­Tube and Goo­gle­Vi­deo inline from the reply box. Now I only wish I could somehow apply these to blog­ger so that I don’t have to add the html every time I want to post something dynamic.