MP3 Free Music Madness! 6 Free Downloads from Rachel Lampa, Seabirds, The Wellspring, and others!

To be perfectly honest, before today I didn't even know what a Brueggers was... (it's apparently a bagel shop franchise?) but I'm definitely not going to let that stand in the way between me and free music!  Right now if you "like" Brueggers on facebook, you can not only download 6 free songs, you can also get a coupon for a free lemonade cooler while you're at it too!  Obviously that last part only benefits people who know what a Brueggers is and where to find one, but the first part can benefit us all.  The downloads include:

Seabird -- "Don't You Know You're Beautiful"
Rachel Lampa -- "Avalanche"
The Almost -- "Hands"
Jaymes Reunion -- "Fine"
The Letter Black -- "Hanging on by a Thread"
The Wellspring -- "Put Up a Fight"

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Arrested Development... the action film???? aka, if a Unicorn Were a Movie, It Would Be the Arrested Development Movie

Paste Magazine made my day recently by posting this awesome mash-up of what the Arrested Development movie might look like... if it was actually an action flick.

Pro: It's really funny.
Con: It makes me really impatient to see the actual Arrested Development movie. Which, as any AD fan knows, is kind of this mythical thing that all of us hope will exist, but none of us ever really expect to see... but at the same time, we're wishing for it on every shooting star, wishbone, and otherwise lucky object we come in contact with.

So yeah, whether or not Arrested Development: The Awesome Movie will ever come to pass, we still have this spoof trailer to enjoy today!

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Free Music Madness: 16 Free MP3s from Spin Magazine!

Oooh this is fun!  Spin is actually my favorite music magazine due to the fact that it's a lot more lively and a lot less pretentious then Paste (don't get me wrong, I love Paste, but they wouldn't let me intern with them way back when and a girl has a right to be bitter), and they just endeared themselves to me further by offering up free MP3 downloads with their latest issue!  Through September 30th, you can download a playlist of 16 songs off of iTunes, including music from Of Montreal, the Local Natives, and The Land of Talk.

Sweet deal!

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Biodegradable Trash Bags... Awesome Idea or Flagrant Greenwashing?? aka, I found a controversy in your garbage can.

Ok, so as y'all might have noticed, last week I was all like, wooo-hooo!  Biodegradable trashcans will keep archaeologists from being grossed out by the contents of my trash-can in a thousand years! and was quite gung-ho about a line of biodegradable trash bags called Green Genius.  I still think they sound awesome in theory, and hope I get my free sample just because I like trying new products, but since then I seem to have discovered a bit of a controversy in my trashcan.

Shortly after writing the aforementioned post, I stumbled across something on the Seventh Generation website that made me think twice about my earlier enthusiasm.  According to their environmental column "Ask Science Man," materials that would be biodegradable under normal circumstances (including biodegradable trashbags) still aren't going to be able to bio-degrade in a landfill due to the lack of oxygen.  Basically, until we somehow get more environmentally friendly landfills (ha!), biodegradable trash bags really aren't going to do squat.  Dangit!

However, that doesn't mean you should just shrug and revert back to your old-standard plastic trash bags -- you can still make a positive impact on the environment simply by switching to recycled bags.  This isn't nearly as hard or expensive as you think -- at my house, we use very affordable, and remarkably durable, 60% recycled plastic trash bags from a brand called GoodSense.  And where do we buy these oh-so-noble holders-of-garbage?  At our local Wal Mart.  Like I said, its really a quite simple way to make a positive impact on the environment.

Don't believe me?  Check out Science Man's numbers:  if every household in the US replaced just one package of 20 count tall kitchen trash bags made from virgin plastic with trash bags that have 55% recycled content, 720,000 cubic feet of landfill space (equal to 1,100 full garbage trucks) would be saved.

Wait, did we read that correctly??  Swapping out just ONE SINGLE package of trashbags would save us more than 1000 garbage trucks worth of landfill space???  Just imagine what the numbers become when people start buying recycled bags exclusively.  Pretty compelling, no?

If you want to find out more about the biodegradable vs recycled trash bag controversy, check out the rest of Science Man's column here.  And consider making the swap to recycled in your own home!

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Seismic Shifts in the World of Boredom Devastation...

I've been procrastinating on this for far too long, but the time has come to woman-up and deal with it.

Friends, I'm going to split my blog into two.  I had figured that whatever devastated my boredom would also devastate the boredom of the world at large... but I need to face the fact that that probably isn't entirely true.

So, Devastate Boredom will remain here, a haven of joyous free music, internet frivolity, TV reviews (yes, I'm capable of talking about a show other than Lost, believe it or not...), random samples and free odds-and-ends to delight your mailbox, and whatever else entertaining flotsam and jetsam catches my eye.

For updates on healthy coupons and deals, cooking adventures, efforts to darken my shade of green, and escapades in balcony gardening, as well as philosophical musings and other posts of a more personal nature, you'll have to visit my shiny new blog Capturing Charisma.

By dividing my interests thus, I hope to do a much better job maintaining an environment here that truly devastates boredom, without sacrificing my desire to appraise the world at large of my other interests.

(It makes sense in my head anyhow.)

To conclude:  if you like my posts about avant guarde domestication, and edgy urban self-actualization, please don't miss out on a single one!  Click here for updates via email, or hop right over to Capturing Charisma and sign up for updates via a feed reader.  I will do my best to make sure you're glad you did.  :)

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Free Sample of Green Genius Biodegradable Trash Bags!

Green Genius, the company behind an awesome line of biodegradable trash bags, is currently offering free samples of their product!  I LOVE the idea behind these bags, especially since composting isn't an option for us currently -- bags like these will prevent your trash from simply sitting stagnate in a landfill, neatly sealed up in its plastic coffin, and instead will let it do what nature intended.  I don't know about you, but I'm all about my kitchen scraps turning into dirt rather than waiting around to eventually gross out archaeologists.  Green Genius trash bags seem like an easy way to deepen our shade of green, even just a little, so I'm excited for the chance to try them out.  Sign up for your sample and let me know what you think!

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Amazon Free Music Madness: She & Him, The Clientele, Silversun Pickups, and more than 40 others!

Amazon's sampler downloads are always fun... a quick and easy way to pick up a ton of great new music and you only have to hit "download" a few times!  ;P

Check out the Dangerbird Amazon Sampler for music from Silversun Pickups, Minus the Bear, and The Dears, among others.

For music from She & Him, The Clientele, and Spoon, you're going to want to pick up the Merge 2010 Sampler.

For oldie-tinged  British rock, from artists like Cocktail Slippers, The Woggles, and The Chesterfield Kings, you're going to want the Wicked Cool Coming Attractions sampler.

The Beehouse Records 2010 Spring Sampler provides some laid-back listening, featuring Franklin for Short, and Tall Tales and the Silver Lining.

Other previously-recommended Amazon free downloads that are still available:
Frenchkiss Records Super Sampler -- Think indie. Eight tracks, including some I definitely approve of, from Local Natives, The Antlers, and the dodos.

March 2010 Saddle Creek Sampler -- Think alternative rock. Some of it is a little weird (umm still not sure what was going on with that Uuvvwwz thing), but I like the Old Canes, Land of Talk, and Mynabirds tracks. Thirteen downloads total.

Au Revoir Simone The song is "Shadows" from the album Still Night, Still Light from last year. They're among my indie-rock favorites, and I think pretty much anybody would find their music enjoyable... or so my biased opinion goes anyhow.

There's also two free downloads from the Lovell Sisters' album Time To Grow-- the title track and "In My Time of Dyin.'" I somehow managed to not know the history of that last song, but it's apparently a blues stand-by that was covered by Led Zeppelin at some point, and gets a fresh, bluegrass treatment here. If you enjoyed the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack you'll probably like these.

One I wasn't planning on mentioning but just stumbled across while I was downloading the Lovell Sisters' tracks is the song  "Way To Here" by Gypsy Tailwind.  Anybody know this group?? As soon as I get some extra time (HA!) I'm going to have to try to do some researching, because this free track is good. It's another folk/bluegrass type, but with some really nice male/female vocal interplay (also known as a duet, but that somehow didn't express it for me)

Then we've got a whole album (11 tracks!) called Great City, from an alternative rock group named Revere. I'm still listening through this one, but I like it a lot so far -- if you like more hard rock stuff then this one is for you. Edit: Aha! I have it now.. I was trying and trying to remember who they reminded me of. I think they remind me of My Chemical Romance, if that helps you imagine their sound...

Ok, gotta make myself stop... that's all for now, but if you haven't already you should consider subscribing via email or RSS so that you won't miss a single update! I promise to keep your iPod slammin' and jammin'. Um yea, I just made that up. But you get the idea. ;)

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