Tikkabik

I feel about Web pages like past generations feel about children -- see the title of this rant if further elucidation is necessary. If you're embedding MIDI files in your Web pages, for the love of God, stop it.

My wife hits a very different set of Web sites than I do. I usually keep to tech and news pages -- places where common sense dictates that you don't put something as schmalzy as a MIDI file on a Web page. She, however, has a tendency towards Web sites that involve parenting or other stuff that, for some reason, is created by Web page authors who think MIDI files are a good idea.

A) MIDI files generally sound like ass unless they're being routed through thousands of dollars' worth of sequencing equipment.

B) The people who embed MIDI files in Web pages invariably have shit-sucking taste in music. It's always crap like "Wind Beneath My Wings" or "The Greatest Love of All" that gets the MIDI treatment -- never "Hooker with a Penis" or "Like a Stone."

C) MIDI files can make even good music sound like shit. Because they're not being played or produced by anyone with an actual feeling for how the music should sound.

So usually, a few times a week, the relative quiet of our family room will be broken by the tinny wail of some adult contemporary crapola blasting from the SoundSticks connected to Bonnie's G4. And inevitably, she's shut it off as soon as I shriek, "What the hell IS that garbage?"

"I think it was Where Does My Heart Beat Now?, but don't hold me to it..."