Stupid computer....
"Maddy! Why isn't this stupid thing showing the song titles?"
She looked. "It has to be in their database to pick up the album info. I don't think it is - yet."
"Shouldn't it be in there if it's been released?"
"I think it's been released but not like "officially" officially released. Like it isn't available on say. Amazon or anything." She isn't sure how this whole Pledgemusic thing works any more than I am. It's a long (and presumably better) way from the days when Big Record controlled - well, just about everything. But long story short, the long-awaited Satellite Paradiso CD arrived on the eve of Christmas eve - one heck of an awesome little Christmas surprise. (Of course, if Maddy ever bothered to actually CHECK her Gmail from time to time, she would have known it was on the way!)
And as for why we're using the computer to play it in the first place - well, we can't find the remote control for the CD player - Maddy *thinks* she might have accidentally packed it up with the air conditioner, because we found the remote for the air conditioner on top of the CD player - and in a cruel twist of modern fate, the CD player is inoperable without the remote. Oops.
All that aside, it really is one heck of an awesome album. We've actually been listening to a secret, pledge-only MP3 version we downloaded in May, but we never burned a CD copy - and it ended up marooned on the failed hard drive in Maddy's old computer. I think that's what they call first-world problems - although they're still not a whole lot of fun when you're having them.
"I like this one," Scaramouche said.
"It's called "Super Anti-Hero," I told her.
"It sounds kind of like the Alarm - like it could have been on
Declaration," she said. "I'm glad to see him back, I always did like him."
"John Ashton?" I swear, this deva knows everyone....
"Yeah. I was up in Beasrville when they were recording
Forever Now. They were a freaking trip. I just loved hanging around them. Somewhere there's a picture of John and my pet salamander at the time, Charlotte."
"I think they were worried toward the end that the whole pledge thing wouldn't come through." I was worried. I think Maddy was, but she kept saying she wasn't.
"I would have gone up there, but all that was right about the time the plane vanished."
"Why did they ask you to help?" I never was clear on that.
"The Ondines - ocean devas - don't have much experience dealing with humans, so they wanted me to act as an intermediary. They thought they might be able to help find the plane. Some of the whales had reported hearing what they thought was that pinger everyone kept talking about, and if they had - well, someone had to lead the humans to the right spot. That was where I would have come in."
"But mot humans don't even know what devas are - or would even believe in you if they did. How were you going to do that?"
"I have my ways. I've worked so much with humans. and I can speak just about any language. It's what I do." She shrugged. "But I wanted to help. I wanted to try to find out what happened. But even the Ondines and the whales and - well, everybody else - couldn't find the plane. Anywhere. Like the humans, we couldn't even find anyone who could definitely say they'd seen it. One Ondine thinks -
thinks - she saw it turn back over the Malay Peninsula, But she isn't sure it was really MH 370." She shook her head. "Trust me. The humans aren't dumb. None of us could find any trace of it, either. And when a whale can't find it, you know it's lost."
I'll have to take her word for that one.....
But on that great dividing line between love and what you wished to find
