Hype Machine is the best.
It's an audioblog aggregator, which means it keeps track of the new hotness all those kids with apartments in Brooklyn and whatnot are posting up THE VERY MINUTE IT HAPPENS. In our digital world, if you can't be one of the tastemakers, you at least can't afford to be even a moment behind in figuring out what the taste is.
The best thing I found this morning was a track from The National Trust posted at Big Stereo.
Just scroll down a bit, there's no permalink. But the National Trust, man. Yeah.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Why this Blog Is Terrible (or) Boredom is Power
So, obviously, I haven't been writing much lately. I had a good run when I was in Japan, but the past four or five months have been grimly slim. Slim meaning, of course, absent. The null set.
Actually the past year and a half has been spotty, after a good year and a half of pretty notable consistency, posting probably four or five days out of seven. Broadly, what happened was I went from a desk job that involved, frankly, a lot of downtime staring at the internets, to a graduate school grind that, while it involves a good deal of unstructured free time, also cuts me loose from a desk. I live a life of constant, unstructured distraction now, rather than the one that kept my body tied to one place and practically forced my mind to wander.
Of course, it's more than a little significant that I got pretty hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft during that same time. Every time I finished my tasks on a certain day (and, all to often, before then), I knew exactly what I was going to do: play Warcraft. Stare off into space? Read a music magazine? Nuh-uh, buddy, I'm off to kill a fucking DRAGON! Doesn't that sound more exciting? And it was. Believe me - when you suddenly find yourself ripped away from Austin and transplanted to Iowa, the idea that a computer game could be more enthralling than real life suddenly seems much more plausible.
And I didn't lose my shit. I didn't become one of those guys you read about - divorced, unemployed, etc. I levelled to 60 in three months and STILL accomplished more than most people on top of that! At least, slightly more. But my life became all too often about fulfilling obligations, about maintaining at a minimum, rather than going above and beyond. Doing the blog was part of going above and beyond - about being more than a consumer, about expending some energy to actully make something.
So I've been a little lax on the whole "personal fulfillment" part of life for a few months. But I may be getting over it. We'll see. At least now I'm wasting my time surfing internet news sites instead of killing dragons. And though this is basically a post about posting, it is, after all, a post. I certainly hope more will come, but I'm not going to force it.
Actually the past year and a half has been spotty, after a good year and a half of pretty notable consistency, posting probably four or five days out of seven. Broadly, what happened was I went from a desk job that involved, frankly, a lot of downtime staring at the internets, to a graduate school grind that, while it involves a good deal of unstructured free time, also cuts me loose from a desk. I live a life of constant, unstructured distraction now, rather than the one that kept my body tied to one place and practically forced my mind to wander.
Of course, it's more than a little significant that I got pretty hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft during that same time. Every time I finished my tasks on a certain day (and, all to often, before then), I knew exactly what I was going to do: play Warcraft. Stare off into space? Read a music magazine? Nuh-uh, buddy, I'm off to kill a fucking DRAGON! Doesn't that sound more exciting? And it was. Believe me - when you suddenly find yourself ripped away from Austin and transplanted to Iowa, the idea that a computer game could be more enthralling than real life suddenly seems much more plausible.
And I didn't lose my shit. I didn't become one of those guys you read about - divorced, unemployed, etc. I levelled to 60 in three months and STILL accomplished more than most people on top of that! At least, slightly more. But my life became all too often about fulfilling obligations, about maintaining at a minimum, rather than going above and beyond. Doing the blog was part of going above and beyond - about being more than a consumer, about expending some energy to actully make something.
So I've been a little lax on the whole "personal fulfillment" part of life for a few months. But I may be getting over it. We'll see. At least now I'm wasting my time surfing internet news sites instead of killing dragons. And though this is basically a post about posting, it is, after all, a post. I certainly hope more will come, but I'm not going to force it.
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