Author: Marvo

Do your remember the times when your parents would read you bedtime stories, like the Three Little Pigs and Sleeping Beauty, to help you fall asleep early so that they can do the horizontal mambo in their bedroom, in the kitchen, or in the bathroom?

It was great because you didn’t have to worry about turning pages, remembering where you left off, or paper cuts, and sometimes nine months later you ended up with a brother or sister.

Today we still have some of those luxuries thanks to audiobooks.

Besides, who has time to sit down and read a book? Not when there’s a Punk’d and Pimp My Ride marathon on MTV and I have to play a season of Madden 2005. However, one of the great things about audiobooks is the ability to multitask. It’s hard to multitask when reading an actual book. There’s no possible way I can read a book, download porn, and play Madden 2005 all at the same time, but with audiobooks I can.

Besides I’m too lazy to flip pages. Have you seen the size of books today? It may look like I’m reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but what I’m really doing is working out my arms with those 255,000 words.

We at the Impulsive Buy are avid fans of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, because it’s where we get our world news. So on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, when the Daily Show isn’t on, we have no idea what’s going on. But then again, we are too stoned to care what’s going on.

America (The Audiobook) takes a humorous look at the history of American government in a textbook format, with classroom activities and discussion questions at the end of each chapter, which we didn’t do because…Um…Our dog ate our answers and then our computer crashed.

The audiobook may lean a little to the left, but whether you’re left-wing, right-wing, or one of those crazy Nader supporters, we think you will find this audiobook humorous. If you don’t, you have no soul or you’re legally deaf.

We were disappointed to find out that the audiobook was an abridged version of the best-selling hardcover book. We were also frustrated we couldn’t see the picture of the Supreme Court naked, which is in the actual book.

On second thought, not seeing that picture may have been a good thing.

Item: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents America (The Audiobook): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction
Purchase Price: $15.95 (iTunes Music Store)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pros: It’s downright funny. Read by Jon Stewart and the other Daily Show correspondents. Right-wing or left-wing, or Nader-loving, there’s something for everyone.
Cons: Abridged version. Didn’t get to see Sandra Day O’Conner’s boobies.

I remember the days when it was so easy to get the music I wanted. Jump on a PC at school, start up Napster, and download songs to my hearts content. Unfortunately, I now have to worry about lawsuits from the RIAA, which by the way is slowly becoming the second scariest acronym behind the IRS.

Now that I’ve gone legit, I get my music from CDs and the iTunes Music Store. However, recently I noticed one of the online music stores called eMusic was offering 50 free MP3 downloads, so I decided to give them a try.

eMusic is a little different than the iTunes Music Store because their catalog only consists of musicians from independent labels. That means you won’t find Britney Spears at eMusic, which is good thing. Also, with the eMusic Music Store, you can’t purchase individual tracks, instead you must sign up for monthly plans which allows you to download a set number of MP3s. Their cheapest plan at $9.99 allows for 40 downloads, which comes out to about 25 cents per song. So cheap that it’s like I’m stealing…I mean, downloading from the old Napster again.

It’s a great deal, but unfortunately, I’m not too familiar with groups on independent labels.

Fortunately, I got a few recommendations from occasional Impulsive Buy browsers, Kari, a former college radio DJ and Gabriel, a sleeveless taiko drummer. While looking through their lists of groups, I thought they were making up names, like The Postal Service, Interpol, Burning Airlines, The Impossibles, Slow Reader, The Music, Hot Hot Heat, Massive Attack, The Shins, and Morcheeba.

However, after searching through the eMusic catalog, I found out that they weren’t messing with my head. Although I didn’t find all the groups, so maybe they were messing with me a little.

While downloading their recommendations, I thought about how easy it must be to create a band name. As a matter of fact, it’s so easy that I created an equation for you boys and girls to remember so that you can create your own band names.

T + A + N = BN
(The + Adjective + Noun = Band Name)

With this equation I’ve created the following names: The Blue Quick, The Liberal Reporters, The French Fliers, The Rejected Credit Card Application, The Empty Wallets, The Stupid Presidents, and The Hyperactive Elementary School Kids on the Playground.

Many of the groups that Kari and Gabriel suggested were really good and it was great to hear something different than the 2,346 songs that were already on my iPod.

After downloading my 50 free MP3s, I decided to sign up for the $9.99 monthly plan, so I could download other groups I’ve never heard of.

(Note to RIAA: All songs downloaded during my misguided college years have been erased from the computer I was using at that time.)

Item: eMusic Music Store
Purchase Price: 50 Free Downloads + $9.99 for 40 Downloads
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Monthly plans are a very good deal. Good source for music from independent labels, with over 500,000 songs. No Britney Spears-type crap. Uses MP3 format, so no DRMs.
Cons: Bad deal if you don’t use up all your downloads during each month, which expire. Sometimes downloads are slow.