Simple Pleasures

The temp job that I'm working at is insanely boring.  I simply take folders that used to be filed separately and place them in the respective main folder.  I would probably go insane from the tedium, but I'm allowed to have my earbuds in while I work, so my sanity remains ... for now.

The first week I mostly just listened to random music while working, but this week I planned ahead a bit more.  First I downloaded several podcasts to listen to.  My favorite podcasts come from Radiolab (which I very enthusiastically recommend), but I just discovered that Cracked recently started doing a weekly podcast and they're a ton of fun.  I must say, this kind of mental stimulation is wonderful.  The day goes by a lot faster because the topics are interesting and thought provoking, like how days didn't used to be 24 hours long or how our memories aren't as reliable as you might think.

The other thing that I've done is listen to albums completely through.  Even when I have a whole album on my music player, I'll just keep it set to shuffle and listen to whatever pops up.  I've done this for years - I used to feel pressure about picking the "right" song to listen to while I was working out or walking to class or something, but by keeping the music on shuffle, I wasn't picking any song and just allowing randomness take over.  But if I transferred a new album to my player, I would just get the songs as they came, never listening to the album through first, even once.  However, I've been taking time this week listening to full albums in order, just as the band or artist intended.  There really is an art to ordering the songs on an album and it's nice to take the time to appreciate it, even for albums that I've already heard before.

So I've taken a job that's challenging in how simple it is and turned it into an opportunity to expose myself to some really fun auditory art.  Do you, dear audience, have any recommendations for fun podcasts or good albums?