5 Links: The Color Green Edition

It’s autumn in the northern hemisphere, which normally means three minutes of fall and five months of winter here in Minnesota. Thankfully summer is refusing to go away and we might get a reprieve on the onslaught of snow for a little while longer. Here are a few things you may have missed in case you were trying to balance an egg the other day.

- Musician Rich Mullins died twelve years ago this month. If all you know about Rich is that he wrote “Awesome God,” you should probably know that it was one of his least favorite songs. Scratching the surface, you find an artist who made you wonder how he fit into the world of Christian music so easily. He smoked, drank, and swore. He wrote songs about Christmas where he admitted that for children Santa was more exciting than Jesus’ birth. I was at a panel about the direction of Christian music where he showed up barefoot and late and made fun of other artists. While none of this is odd for a musician or artist, it is a little odd to know these things while seeing his name pop up in hymnals and on overheads.

Jason Boyett has a lot more about Rich, and while you’re there check out his very informative (and hilarious) pocket-guides. I have the one about The Bible and it was very well written – and he has them on sale if you look around.

- Dollhouse is back starting tonight and in the grand tradition of Joss Whedon he’s bringing actors from his previous shows onto his new one. This time it’s Summer Glau, last seen in the previous hour on FOX with the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles series. Alexis Denisof (seen both on Buffy and Angel) is apparently going to be on the show regularly. Here’s a lot more, including a hint at what we can expect.

- Remember when iTunes came out? It was the perfect compromise between what music listeners wanted (downloadable music at a decent price) and what the music industry and rights-holders wanted (copyright protection, money). It’s never been a perfect marriage; labels have been hounding Apple to up the price for years while customers have complained about the DRM’d music after they realized they’d have to rip a CD and re-encode it to get their songs to work with anything but Apple products. Now it gets stranger: rights-groups want Apple and others to pay for the 30-second previews. Consultant Mark Ramsey puts it aptly:

…. if you think a 30-second sample is a “performance” I urge you to see how much applause your favorite band gets when they play just 30 seconds of any song…probably the same amount of applause your consumers are giving you right now.

It’s another example of life imitating The Onion. Again.

- I walked through the local Christian bookstore the other day and noticed a large number of board and video games for sale. Sure, some of them were just Christianized versions of things like Guitar Hero, but for some reason I saw a few games you’d expect at any other store — including Settlers of Catan. While there’s certainly nothing outright un-Christian about it, I wondered what would earn its place next to the Adventures in Odyssey board game sitting there.  So does Patrol Magazine, where the writers claim that the somewhat geeky game is a fixture across Christian campuses and youth groups worldwide. It’s pretty fun, but I’ll take their word for it.

- Windows 7 is coming out in less than a month, and thus begins the questions you always have when a new version comes out: Do I upgrade? Will I have to wait months for drivers to be updated? Should I spring for a shrimp platter?

Or how to make sure no one ever comes to a party you throw again. To promote Microsoft new operating system, Windows 7, the company is encouraging people to throw house parties for Windows 7.

It’s like Tupperware or Mary Kay, except you don’t earn a sales commission. You get a free “Party Pack,” with free party favors. And a chance to win a free PC.

And yes, there’s a video promoting the idea, and it’s one for the books. Which reminds me:

• I threw a party for XP when it came out. The problem was that every time I put a new card table in the dining room it made me force everyone out of the room and back in.
• I threw a party for ME when it came out. The problem was that ME decided to crash its own party.
• I threw a party for Windows 95 when it came out, but a bunch of Mac fanboys complained it looked too much like their party from a few years before.
• I threw a party for Leopard when it came out, but everyone just complained the whole time yet refused to leave.
• I threw a party for Fedora 11 when it came out, but no one could understand the directions to the party. The few that did show up had an awesome time and made their own desserts on the spot.

See you next time…