You know the longest case of the hiccups lasted for sixty-eight years? I imagine at first it was like any other case. Only grew abnormal when he went to bed and woke up still burpin’. But still, he thought, any day now. Just a mighty long case.

It's the longest day of the year, and I'm breaking my one rule—this playlist will be long to match. These songs are the playlist breakers, the ones you can never include because they're too damn tangential. But now they’re all in one place at long last. Nothing under seven minutes.

A big part of being alive is having to get out of bed when you don't want to. One of the worst parts, actually. So I wanted to make another playlist to help anyone who might be needing to calm down on the way home from a bad day at work, or, god forbid, stave off a panic attack (a bit of a riff off my first playlist).

The songs are like a white noise machine, but instead of rain it's the sound of a summer under the fairy lights. It's a nice vibe to return to on long drives or lonely nights. This playlist has my own version of things; some songs that I think are synonyms. Consider it my thesaurus for the soundtrack.

It's a playlist of what we dub Record Store Songs. These are things I would play if I were ever lucky enough to work the counter at Record Collector, one of Iowa's best and brightest businesses. Almost every record I own is from there. I tried to stop there every time I walked home from class.

Your move came just in time for a housewarming party on Memorial Day weekend. It's no penthouse, but you can see the Rockies, and there's a pool. Happiness, after years of dormancy, has awakened at last.

“1. Do not obey in advance. 2. Defend institutions. 3. Beware the one-party state. 4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. 5. Remember professional ethics.”

I, too, would love to sail across the sea for years and not come back until this country is ready to be rebuilt. I find that very relatable.

Another year, another Shaky Knees playlist! Light on text this week cause I'll be at the festival, but you can follow along at home, all of these songs are all-timers. I've been itching to give you guys "Seventeen" and "Pressure to Party" back-to-back for months.

A wyrm itself is a sort of wingless, limbless dragon of yore, so this is as good a time as any to confess where I got the Earwyrms name. I regret to inform everyone that I guess I'm just a huge nerd. My critics don't have to dig much further than my history with Coheed & Cambria.

The sea is very big, and also the scariest thing in the world. If I were to speak into it, I would spew nothing but bubbles, and I'd have to come up for air after accomplishing nothing, which is a bit like tweeting.

We know that vanity stems from deep insecurity: no brag comes untethered from something to prove, some perceived injustice it's trying to conceal. If you're truly comfortable with your status, it remains unremarkable.

My own personal exercise preference is running. It's the only arena of my life where I can set goals and actually achieve them, week-in and week-out, without failure.

*sunrise over sodden beams across the bar floor, splinters stir with foraging rodents*. *kicks aside twisted mic stand, wipes broken reading glasses on blood-stained khakis*.

By personality alone, I'd probably be a Stark, as basic as it sounds: my reticence, my gloomy tendencies, and my preference for cold. Physically, I feel more like a Tully—an auburn-headed boy from a land of rivers—but maybe we'll get to that in later weeks.

2009: the last good year, or the first bad one? Less depends on the events of the past, and more on how young you are when they happen.

We narrowly avoided this being the single worst playlist I've ever put together, just by how crazy pop music had become in 1999. Maybe Y2K had us losing more of a grip than we thought; whatever the reason, it was a year that a lot of the lamest songs of all time were released.

*tornado siren in distance* *clears throat into mic, takes reading glasses out of sweat-soaked khakis*

For a long time I've wanted to send out a playlist of my very favorite songs, unrestricted by any theme except that of self-indulgence. It will help lay some ground-work for the point-of-view I can never fully remove from a project of curation such as this, and I can't think of a better time than now.

I'm the last person you'd expect to be eulogizing a robot, but the rover's story has made me reflect. It was art and science combined: photography and engineering, architecture and electronics, choreography and computing.