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Help us. Christopher sends this query:

Hey, those of you who use iTunes and so on. I’m putting (most of) our cd collection onto iTunes because presumably we’ll someday have some kind of mp3 players. Also so we can sell a bunch of ’em. Also so we can clear up room for another bookcase.

Anyway, I only have a 30gb hard drive on this computer, so I know I want to move a lot this stuff to my external hard drive, which has about 70gb free right now. My trouble is that my digital files are even more of a mess than my paper files, and I want to keep the stuff organized in some fashion. If I just hit the export library button (or whatever it’s called), what’s the result going to look like on the other end? Can I use iTunes to open multiple libraries, one on my computer and one on my external hard drive? Is there a "managing your music files for dummies" website?

Advice? Mockery? Offers for free iPods?

The traditional Hank Stuever wrap up piece:

We’ve been doing this forever, not just since the middle afternoon, not just for eight decades of Oscar. Clytemnestra, in ancient Greek tragedy, put down a red carpet (or purple robes, in some translations) for her husband Agamemnon when he returned from war. She did it because she hated him, and she wanted to trick him into showing arrogance, which would displease the gods. He knew this, but he walked the red carpet anyhow. (Exclaiming as he did: Oh ma gaw!, Jessica Simpson-style.)

He must not have been allowed into the Vanity Fair party this year, it seems… Oh well. William Booth turns in a fun take as well.

Ed’s party was great fun. Now my head hurts and I’m sleepy.

Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten who commissioned and published those now infamous cartoons, explains the decision in a must-read piece in today’s WaPo:

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn’t intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled non-current affairsy posts.)

Any day in which more than one new site is added to le blogroll is a day of happiness and procrastination. Today, welcome:

• Rarely Likable
• Intersecting Lines
• The Written Nerd
• The Wit of the Staircase

A few links got vamoosed as well, but it’s not because I don’t love you — it’s because you don’t update frequently enough. I’m still watching you. I also made sure most everyone has a little tag that flashes over their link. Look, I’m not proud. I’m just saying.

The NYT looks at the ongoing fascination with the Black Dahlia murder and the new movie based on James Ellroy’s novel:

During her brief lifetime, Elizabeth Short never starred in a single movie. There is no record of her having played so much as a bit part. Yet within popular culture, Short — who frequently told friends she wanted to break into show business — has emerged as something of an honorary leading lady whose shadowy life and violent death follow the contours of a classic film noir script.

Michaelangelo Matos has a beautiful post about his own history and R.E.M.:

Then the guy, a mean alcoholic who lived at the hostel when he wasn’t in Alaska fishing, lean down and said, “If you move another muscle, I swear to God I’m going to beat the living shit out of you.” I silently gripped a loose plank above my mattress, intending to bash his face in if he came near me. A day later, I moved into a house near 100th and Aurora, with a short, black dominatrix who got us all kicked out after not paying the rent for the three months I lived there.

The reason I bring all this up is that I’m playing, for the first time in probably ten years, R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

It’s worth your time.

A quote from John Gregory Dunne by way of a Jonathan Yardley essay about Dunne (the whole thing is worth reading):

"Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier. Each book in fact is a tabula rasa; from book to book I seem to forget how to get characters in and out of rooms — a far more difficult task than the non-writer might think. Still I went to my office every day. That is the difference between the professional and the amateur. The professional guts a book through this period, in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve, and a failure of nerve is the best definition I know for writer’s block."

(BookWorld is actually stuffed with good pieces this week — Dirda on Conan, John Crowley on a new bio of Robert Louis Stephenson, etc. Plus, there’s the Style pageant piece.)

Another mystery:

How does someone go from writing Real Genius to several installments of Police Academy and WORSE?

(Also, this guy is creepily obsessed with Michelle Meyrink aka Jordan.)

Better than King Kong.

See also: Le Cineclub with Emma and Lauren’s take

Hearing Marissa Nadler sing "Flora Barone, Queen of the Vaudeville Throne" is something else. And she even has an MP3 of a live version recorded by the BBC, so you can go hear what I mean. (And there’s more in the listening booth too.) And she’s going on the road next year.

This song was included on a Comes With a Smile sampler, which is full of excellent stuff.