dowloading whore

This past week, I’ve downloaded six new albums. There’s a good chance that the number will go up to nine by the end of the weekend.

What surprises me about this is not my immoderate music consumption but the fact that, as a self-proclaimed sucker for packaging, I’ve fallen so completely for the mp3 format. Downloads are so anonymous. There is no cover art. There are no liner notes. There are no carefully chosen fonts. I have always liked these things and the tone they set when you sit down and listen to an album for the first time.

But when I started buying a lot of new music again this summer, the Lure of the Download began working its magic upon me. They provide you with instant gratification. They’re cheaper than CDs, and they’re better for the environment. And, in a way, it’s kind of nice not being primed to approach an album a certain way because of the way it looks. (That whole book and cover thing, I guess.)

And did I mention the instant gratification part?

Yeah. There’s that.

Cranky disclaimer: I am still not a fan of downloading “a” song off an album. I did it a couple times when I was making my summer mix, and it made me feel dirty. Albums–real ones made by real artists–are still meant to be listened to as such. And some of the best songs are the ones that lack the immediate appeal of a single. </rant>

“Shit My Dad Says”

No, not my dad. This guy’s dad.

A highlight:

“Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.”

(Thanks to Patty O’Toole for the assist.)

PSA

Just because your headphones prevent you from hearing the excessively loud gas you are passing does not mean your fellow commuters can’t hear it, either.

places you shouldn’t be twittering

I’ll spare you the rest of the top 10 list and get right to number 1.

That would be the birthing room. Yes, people. The fucking birthing room.

If you don’t have time to read the whole article, here’s a highlight from childbirth tweeter Terra Carmichael:

“At the moment nothing went through my head. It was just like, ‘This is how I’m feeling and so this is going out there and if you don’t like it you don’t have to read it,’ ” she said. “Afterwards, I was like ‘I hope I wasn’t too gross or graphic.’”

If there is ever a moment during which “nothing is going through my head,” I promise not to share it with any of you. Cause it’s probably, well, not a good idea.

(See also. Ten bucks says Terra’s on there, too. Ten bucks!)

Poop Club

First rule of poop club is no talking about poop club.

I’m very, very grateful to have friends who know which stories about their kids are for sharing and which ones are not.

You are not all this lucky.

This blog is for you.

much atwitter about nothing

As some of you already know, I hate Twitter.

One could argue that it is reactionary and irrational for me to spend actual energy hating an interface that hasn’t done anything to me. No one is putting a gun to my head and making me tweet, or read other people’s twits, or listen as they recite these twits in my ear in low, menacing tones.

And it’s true. I’m not being forced to do anything. But the nagging sense of the whole system’s fucked-uppitude won’t leave me.

Cause it seems to me that Twitter–this tool dedicated to “keeping everyone in the know”–is so popular precisely because it makes others think there is so much more to us that they don’t know, and that this unknowability, somewhat paradoxically, makes them feel they know enough about us to want to know more. Even though they still don’t know anything.

It’s like the whole dirty mess of humanity’s existential crisis being hung out to dry on a global clothesline.

Gah. (Shudder.)

quitting time, pt. 2

Next on the chopping block, Bravo reality tv.

First Project Runway went to hell in a handbasket, and now this travesty of a Top Chef finale.

I guess I always knew these shows were just as schlocky as all the other reality tv stuff I pretend to be too good for, but for a while they at least maintained a veneer of authenticity. Last night was just lame, though. And sad. A truly lovely personality succumbed to a fatal flaw. A consistently formidable competitor’s dominant past performances were deemed irrelevant. And, as a result, the chef who just barely won was not the best (or second best) chef in the finale.

(He also happens, despite all his assertions that he’s “a nice guy,” to be a genuine prick. That’s really secondary, but it doesn’t make it sit any better.)

I’ve decided that, if dumb tv makes me sad instead of happy, it really isn’t worth watching. So I’m done.

(sigh)

quitting time

So, back when us common folk were just starting to use the interwebs for interpersonal communication, these things called emoticons were invented.

Horrible things. Things I mocked, scorned, and generally distrusted.

Then, a couple years back, I started using them.

It started with the winky face. That coy little semicolon peeking over a parenthetic grin that promised to convey my sarcasm when I was being too fucking lazy to write it properly.

Then came the smiley face. I’ve always had a thing against exclamation points, but without them, IM conversations just didn’t seem … I don’t know. Happy enough. So, in lieu of an evil that was at least a legitimate form of punctuation, I started putting all these little grinning assholes everywhere.

(It does not make them cool that the Comedian wears one in The Watchmen. Nothing can make them cool. They are the antithesis of cool. Besides, he wears it, like, ironically. I’ve yet to see someone effectively use an emoticon ironically. They are the antithesis of irony. And of cool. Did I mention that?)

Anyway, it’s gotten worse. Much worse. I have started slipping the sad face into certain IM conversations with certain people. (You know who you are, and I apologize.)

I’ve moved from a casual user to a fucking addict. And it needs to stop.

So, I’m quitting. Cold turkey.

Feel free to admire my bravery and loudly applaud my decision. And if you get an email from me in which I kind of sound like I’m being an asshole, remember, I’m working without Ol’ Winky for the first time in awhile, and I’m probably just failing at being funny.

Booya!

facebook, shmacebook

I knew pretty much nothing about the history of facebook until we started a forum on it in my Technology in Education class this past week.

Whoa, nelly.

Am I the only one who’s a little bit disturbed by the implications of a “college-only” social/career networking site? There’s got to be a better way to make sure that you’re keeping “spammers and pornographers” away without wiping out anyone sans a college degree and an active university email account. (And, on the flip side of that coin, are all college students and recent graduates upstanding individuals? Seriously.)

But the part that makes this more unsettling for me is the sense I get that this is just as much a career networking tool as a social networking one, even if partly by implication. Does something like facebook (pre-9/06 anyway) become just another networking tool that people without a degree get shut out of?

happy pills

happy pills

So, a new study was recently published that revealed happy pills are the most widely prescribed medications in the United States.

More than blood pressure pills. More than headache pills. More than birth control pills.

Fucking happy pills.

Now, far be it from me to say that there is no one who serves to benefit from antidepressants. But 118 million prescriptions in 2005?

I’m gonna use my completely unscientific method of stomping three times with a rusty rake, turning in a circle, and holding a finger to the wind to reckon a couple of things. First, I’m gonna reckon that about a third of those folks really need those prescriptions, due to clinical depression that isn’t improving with therapy, repeated suicidal thoughts, etc. Next, I’m gonna reckon that there are so many damned antidepressant ads on TV–filled with animated butterflies and sunny skies and happy-looking soccer moms breathing in the fresh air and smiling antidepressed smiles–that another third of these folks are getting prescriptions simply because they ask for them. Lastly, as my rusty rake has about one more decree left in it today, I’m gonna reckon that the remaining third have lazy-ass doctors who are ruining their patients’ lives by giving them pills that are going to make them forget about the problems that they need to address.

Way too many fucking happy pills, people.

And, regardless of how many people really need them, you’ve got to wonder: What the hell are we doing wrong in the good ol’ U.S. of A. that we’ve got this many people medicating their happiness?