organic...salt?

I'm looking at the ingredient list in a packaged lentil salad. There are seven ingredients, and each one has an asterisk indicating that it's certified organic.
One of the ingredients is salt, which I find puzzling. Now, I kind of get the idea that you don't want salt to disqualify a food from being organic. But this labeling offends my sensibilities. Salt is a mineral. It's not in any way, shape or form organic matter. It should not be labelled as "organic." I suppose I would make the same argument about water.
Now, to be perfectly clear, I'm not accusing the makers and sellers of this lentil salad of any wrongdoing. I'm assuming there are rules for these things, and I'm sure that this label follows the rules -- both in spirit and letter.
If I were king of the world and it were up to me, inorganic ingredients would not be labelled as organic. But certain inorganic ingredients would not disqualify the product from being labelled as organic. Water and salt come to mind. While I can't think of any others offhand, I wouldn't want to say there aren't any.
FWIW, the salad was yummy.

to stream my music -- please help me

Actually, this post is a plea for help from my more technical-minded friends.

Short version:
How do I upload my music collection to the cloud so that I can stream it on my phone (or a computer, I suppose) when I am not at home.

Long version:
I love listening to music, but I'm generally not into listening to music on the radio. I much prefer listening to my music. From my collection. It seems like a contradiction, but I've been this way since high school, which is when I first got into music. At the time I started making mix tapes. And I made more mix tapes. Then more. And as the technology has changed, I've changed with it. Well, I've changed behind it, but you get the picture. At this point, I've been ripping my CD collection onto a computer, so that when I'm at home I can listen to it on shuffle play. It becomes my ultimate mix tape. With tens of thousands of songs.

And on days when I work from home, I pretty much spend the whole time having music playing in the background. I turn it off for meetings, of course, but other than that, it's on.

I had tried to get the music from my computer onto my phone. But space limitations on my phone forced me to start trying to decide what to put on it, and it became a big hassle. So I kind of dropped the idea -- until someone suggested I use Google Play Music (or whatever its name is) to upload my music to the cloud. Then, he said, I'd be able to log into my account on any web-enabled device, and stream music from my collection. But for some reason I couldn't get it done. I found it cumbersome, in Google Play Music to find the page to upload my music, and when I did my computer wouldn't allow it. Maybe that was ESet, which is my anti-malware protection?

Now, I know there are lots of ways of listening to music online that don't involve it being my collection. There are radio stations that stream, and there are services that will customize the music around my taste. I kind of enjoyed Pandora for a while. But none of these solutions feel as satisfying to me as listening to my music. streaming randomly.

So, can anyone recommend a service that will allow me to make an account, upload my music to the web, and then stream it through their website or an app on my phone? I don't care if there are ads, but I want the service to be free. And easy to use. Any thoughts?

lishmo'ah indonevi shel anshei hak'far

One of my favorite Israeli pop songs is "תנו לי רוקנרול" by תיסלם. The song, whose title translates to "Gimme Rock'n'Roll," is essentially a story of conflict. A guy loves rock and roll, but the object of his affection prefers disco.

Years ago when I first tried to translate it into English I got stuck on the end of the last verse. In Hebrew, it's:

הושבת אותי בחדר אתמול עד מאוחר
לישמוע אינדוניוי של אנשי הכפר

Transliterated, it's:

Hoshevet oti bacheder etmol ad me'uchar
Lishmo'ah indonevi shel anshei hak'far.

It made no sense, and I couldn't figure out that word that was pronounce indonevi. All I could figure out was that it was something along the lines of:

She sat me in a room yesterday until late
To hear <indonevi> belonging to the villagers.

Eventually a friend figured it out for me. He's Israeli, and it confused him, so I was at least in good company.

"Anshei hak'far," which literally meant "the villagers" was meant to be a translation of "The Village People." And, of course, "indonevi" was a Hebrew-accented pronunciation of "In the Navy." So the couplet translates to:

She sat me in a room yesterday until late
To hear "In the Navy" by the Village People.

It was confusing because the songtitle was transliterated from the English and the band name was translated.

But the translation was complete.

Yeah, I guess it's kind of a lame anecdote. But it's an excuse to post a video of a great record.

cinema history class: killer klowns from outer space

Session: Bring Your Own Movie Month 2018, Week 3
Movie 1: Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
Directed by Stephen Chiodo
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Space aliens have landed and are terrorizing the town. Oh, and they look like clowns. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
I was very torn about what to bring for Bring Your Own Movie Month this year. Considering many candidates, I settled on Klowns because Sharon said she'd come to class if I showed it. IN the end, she couldn't come to class, as she had an Overwatch tournament to compete in, but that's neither here nor there. Klowns, is among my favorite movies, despite its sophomoric nature. The fact is, it's a better film than one would expect based on its screaming title.

Nevertheless, I was kind of nervous about how well it would go over. My choices for BYOM month have received mixed reviews. So I was pleased by the reactions.

I was expecting Sean to like it, and his grade was no surprise. I had discussed my choice with Keith, so I was also aware that he likes the film. In a sense that's out of character, as Keith tends not to like it when horror is played for comedic effect. But he apparently makes an exception for KK, because of its unique cleverness.

Joe and Dave were the two guys in the class who had never seen this, and they both surprised me by giving it high marks. They appreciated the campy quality, which seemed out of the 1960s, and they both (correctly) felt that John Vernon (as police officer Mooney) stole every scene he was in.

Despite having seen this many times, I gained some new insight. I forget who made the observation -- maybe it was Keith. But one of the things that makes the film work is the fact that the clowns seem to to seduce their victims, luring them in with comedy or other entertainment before turning on them. It's an interesting aspect to the dynamic that I had never noticed before.

Score!

Ratings:
Dave: 9.8
Ethan: 8
Joe: 9.67*
Keith: 9
Sean: 3 out of 4

*Joe specified his methodology: It scored a 9 as a sci-fi/horror film, a 10 as 1960's (esque) camp, and a 10 for the Dickies. He said to weigh those three scores equally. Thank God I'm an actuary.

rerouted e -- or simply f?

There's something I don't understand about the E and F subway lines in Queens.

By way of background, for the non-Queensians, the E and F trains end (or begin, I suppose, depending on your perspective) their runs in Jamaica. After leaving Manhattan, they both follow a trunk line under Queens Blvd. Just past the Briarwood Station (which purists among us still call the Van Wyck Blvd. Station) they part course. The E goes to Jamaica Center while the F goes to 179th Street.

The E train goes closer than the F to my office in Manhattan, but the 1479 Street terminal of the F train is my home station. So on days that I work in Manhattan ("the city" in local parlance), my return commute starts with an E train but I switch to an F -- usually at Union Turnpike.

But sometimes an odd thing happens. The E train will get rerouted over the F line and go to 179th Street. When that happens, I feel like I've hit the jackpot. Instead of having to get up and wait for another train, I get to stay on the one that I'm already on. Of course, lots of other commuters are annoyed at the inconvenience for them But that's their problem.

Anyway, when the rerouting happens, we are notified by an announcement from the conductor along the lines of "This is an E train running over the F line. For Jamaica Center, please wait for the next E train." What I don't get is why they insist on calling it an "E train running over the F line" rather than an F train. Once the rerouting has occured, the train is effectively an F.

And it's not just a pedantic point I'm making. There are many immigrants in the area, some of whom aren't native English speakers. I would think that a simple announcement like "This is now an F train to 179th Street" would be easier for people to understand.

ANd don't even get me started on the occasional morning E trains that start at 179th Street...