shopping

Due no doubt to some chemical imbalance, I have chosen the week preceding Christmas as a perfect time for a CD shopping spree. I'm not worried that other people's gifts will duplicate my purchases--everything I'm buying is pretty obscure, and I think the people who give me presents have all learned that their choices should be obscure too, so there's not much chance of overlap--but there is a problem of overload. I just don't have the opportunity to digest this much music this fast.

Anyway, part of my spree was the discovery, thanks to beautifulnoise, of ToneVendor, and today the package arrived (to my surprise--I wasn't expecting it before Christmas). Here's what it contained:

• CDs by Aurore Rien, Midsummer and Coastal (split CD), Pia Fraus, and For Against, none of which I'd ever heard of before last week.
  
• A blue ribbon neatly tying them together.
  
• A button for Allen Clapp, of whom I have also not heard.
  
• A handwritten note ("happy listening, erik" with a smiley AND a heart) on Pucca stationery ("Garu is the boy whom Pucca likes very much. Soundless Jumping power and remarkable landing is his ability.")
  

shipping

AND, the crumpled up newspaper they used to fill up the box was the front page of The Onion (38.48, 12-18 December 2002).