Chemical Brothers - Brothers Gonna Work It Out (Track 4): On a continuous recording of remixes, the track listing for this one once pulled onto the iPod is a bit nuts. Not that I have many, this is my favorite of all remix albums, complete fun from beginning to end.

Radio Thailand - Mak Mak Darkie: Fun insight into Thai radio broadcasts

Pink Floyd - Welcome to the Machine: A recent addition to the iPod, showing my roots a bit. I'm not as fascinated with this stuff as I was, oh, 20+ years ago, but it still holds up fairly well to my ears.

Carter USM - Being Here: An uncharacteristically quiet song from Carter.

Terre Thaemlitz - Triangle: Actually using the moniker G.R.R.L. (which I've not bothered to research as to why), this is a pretty straight forward techno-ish piece with fairly dark undertones.

Leonard Cohen - Sisters of Mercy: Cohen is somebody who I think I've tried harder to like than I've ever been able to accomplish. From the relatively recent Live in London, this is one of many strong songs spanning his career, but oddly I ultimately find myself enjoying spectacular covers of Cohen's music more than I do to his original versions.

Laibach - Visra'el: Another haunting version of a national anthem from the angry-sounding industrial band.

Archers of Loaf - Banging on a Dead Drum: A screamy way to end the random eight.

Sitting fees are as cheap as a finger covered in slime.

Wanderin' Weeta recently blogged about leafless trees and her attempts to capture their beauty. By chance, I had just sorted through some shots I took last winter of the trees back on the local trails.

My inspiration was a bit different than finding beauty, unfortunately. The trails here are so green and full of life during the summer that it is nearly stunning to see what the foliage exposes once it is gone. With a great wealth of trees downed from overgrowth and heavy storms during the year, the landscape always strikes me as a desolate place more than the home of summer green.

Every year around March when Spring has obviously defeated Winter's grasp on the area, the trees remain naked, tricking me into thinking they will finally succumb to the dismal elements and never bloom again. But then, almost overnight, the Blue Bells start to blossom, the trees turn green, and all is well.

Nonetheless, leafless trees are still pretty neat looking.

Sometimes the neatest thing about the terrarium is what I can't see.

With the macro lens, I took a shot at this little crevasse in the earth because I saw a small beetle run for shelter here. As I examined the image closely, I found the following.

That would be, I believe, a very young millipede.

I have a hard time coming across centipedes on my nature travels. They are slippery things; moving incredibly fast and, like many insects, not very fond of me, my prodding, and my camera flashing.

On a walk yesterday, I was finding a remarkable number of earthworms. This wasn't an exciting find; while I mean earthworms no specific harm, they are never high on my list of creatures to document. But, while looking under one decayed log, I found a very tiny, rolled up slimy thing that I figured was a very, very small worm. I prodded it gently with a thin leaf stem, trying to get it to coil around so I could get a closer look. But unlike most worms, it wasn't taking the bait (so to speak), and kept slithering away from me.

Frustrated, I finally scooped up a clod of dirt and held the creature in my hand.

Surprisingly, this "worm" expanded to over two inches in length and began speeding across my flesh. It was a very disturbed centipede, looking for sanctuary from my dreadful grasp.

Unlike the millipedes I keep which, for twice as many legs, move about at a methodical pace, the centipede raced all over my hand, threatening to burrow under the sleeve of my sweatshirt and cower who knows were under my clothes. I quickly determined this to be a bad thing, so I gently returned the creature to the ground, but not before snapping off a few shots.

A few moments later, I found another centipede, still fast, but stunned at being uncovered as I rolled a log for investigation. I snapped off a few shots before it found refuge in the gap of the wood.

Taken at the National Zoo last month.

Blind Willie McTell - Broke Down Engine: Starting off the day with the blues. Imagine that.

Sonic Youth - Take Me Back: From the self-released SYR5, this is one of their shorter experimental tracks, but still full of noisy goodness.

Hella - The Devil Isn't Bad: More noisy goodness, albeit a bit more musical than Sonic Youth.

Bugskull - Charmed Life: When the iPod wants noise, the iPod gets noise. Actually, this is probably a bit more droning ambient...I dunno how to put these things into genres, but I do know Bugskull has compelled me with remarkable sounds over the years.

Everly Brothers - It's All Over: I like their less poppy tracks like this one.

The Velvet Underground - Sister Ray: So, we'll be on this one for a while.

Quasi - Seven Years Gone: Great song, great album.

Junkie XL - Saturday Teenage Kick Loud, bouncy fun, complete with Husker Du samples.

I'm a little more cautious about letting slugs walk on my fingers than I am the millipedes. Where as the 'pedes feel like tanks crawling about, the slugs always give me the impression that one wrong move will turn them into a squished mess.

Well, an even bigger squished mess, I guess you could say...

Our friendly neighborhood kitty, Lilly, has returned to visit us and torture our cats. I went outside to greet her; she rolled and rubbed against me, but then went to the door to tease poor Oz.

Ozzy will roll in return, but will also paw at her through the glass. She'll flirt with him, but then run off once he is good and spun.

Sasha, defender of all that is good in the house, sounds a horrid yell every time Lilly comes by. It is amazing how such a sweet cat can make such a vicious noise.

Rush - Time Stand Still: Blast from the past. If this song doesn't contain Neil Peart's most cheeseball lyrics, I don't know what song would.

Rush - Kid Gloves: Once again, an interesting random day.

Pixies - Manta Ray: Fairly typical Pixies; good screaming Frank Black.

Twink - Psychedelic Electrician (Scene 3): Random noisy stuff.

Thuja - Track 11Again from The Deer Lay Down Their Bones, this 17 second track kinda cheats the Random Eight as a filler song between others on the full length release.

Afghan Whigs - Moon River: Another one of the many covers the Dulli-led band crooned out like the lounge lizard I think he always wanted to be.

Snog - The Universe: From Third Mall From The Sun which is the one release from Snog that stands out for me over the others.

Thievery Corporation - Vampires: A Motown / disco-ish track that really doesn't do much for me...vampires are so overdone now...would rather hear a song about zombies...

Taken on my last trip to the National Zoo before the recent cold spell.

Back on the horse for the New Year.

Talking Heads - Stay Hungry: Bringing in the new year with a flash back to the early 80's.

R.E.M. - Kohoutek: And continuing the three-decade old trend with this from my favorite R.E.M. album.

Skinny Puppy - lestiduZ: Well, at least that is newer. The reincarnation of Skinny Puppy has left me a little empty from the Last Rights, Too Dark Park, and The Process days, but this song, like others from Mythmaker has a good edge to it.

Dreadnots - Dream Time One: I guess technically the Dreadnots are calling themselves Robotic Hands of God for this release, available for download here. Whatever they are called, this is a fine collection of music.

Enduser - Devil Tricked The World: Yes, this samples Kevin Spacey's line from The Usual Suspects and overdubs it on a vicious techno/industrial soundtrack (although they distort the clip a little, making me wonder if they didn't pay for it and were attempting to change the sound so nobody would notice).

The Paper Chase - The Laying of Hands The Speaking In Tongues (The Mass Hysteria): from one of my favorite albums of the last year, this is one of many great songs from Someday This Could All Be Yours.

Robyn Hitchcock - No, I Don't Remember Guildford: From that pretty nifty Storefront Hitchcock a few years back, catching Robyn at his solo-best.

Deerhoof - You Can See: As always, a fun song from this quirky band.

Well, perhaps not, but dang tiny. I couldn't even tell it was a spider until I looked at the closeup.